Echo the Absurd
by iheartmwpp
Summary: Harry came to suddenly, his entire body protesting the return to consciousness. Pushing himself off the steering wheel, he glanced over at the passenger seat. His heart stopped. Teddy was gone.
1. You can lose all you have

**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter is the property of J.K. Rowling, Bloomsbury Publishing, Scholastic Corporation, Warner Brothers and Universal Studios.

Silent Hill is/was the property of Keiichiro Toyama, Konami, Konami Digital Entertainment, Climax Studios, Double Helix Games, WayForward Technologies, TriStar Pictures, Universal Studios, and Kojima Productions.

Because of reasons, the "complete" version of this story can be found at Archive Of Our Own dot org.

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><p>Adjusting his rear view mirror for the third time, Harry Potter finally felt as though he'd gotten the hang of this whole driving thing. While he still had to continuously tell himself to drive on the other side of the road and occasionally forgot to use the turn signal, the rest of it had come easy enough to him. The Plymouth Horizon wasn't nearly as good as his father-in-law's old Ford Anglia, obviously, but it was serviceable enough.<p>

Harry had only a vague idea which direction he was meant to be going in; he'd opted out of using a GPS since he didn't want to get overly attached to Muggle technology. Instead he would take his wand from the dashboard every once in a while and say "Point me" to it in order to regain his bearings. He made sure to do it quietly so as to not wake the small figure in the passenger seat.

He took his eyes off the road for a split second to reassure himself that his six-year-old godson was still asleep. Teddy Lupin's hair had faded from the bright yellow-green he'd been sporting most of the day to his father's light brown, framing the heart-shaped face that he'd inherited from his mother. The hand that wasn't clutched tightly around an illustrated copy of _Babbity Rabbity and her Cackling Stump_ had crept up to his mouth. Teddy had stopped sucking his thumb for the most part while conscious, but often when he slept it would become firmly lodged in his mouth once more. Harry smiled gently at the slumbering child, wishing he had a camera so he could pull over and snap a picture to tease his godson in later years. He turned his head to face the road again.

And let out a yell as his high beams illuminated a large gray wolf standing in the middle of the road.

With a curse, Harry jerked the wheel as sharply as he could to the left, swerving to avoid the wolf, who merely stared back at him, unmoving. Teddy screamed as he woke up, which was the last thing Harry heard before slamming into a tree and being thrown into darkness.

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><p>Harry came to suddenly, his entire body protesting the return to consciousness. With a groan, Harry forced himself to awaken entirely, cursing the people who rented the car to him for giving him one with faulty airbags. Pushing himself off the steering wheel, he glanced over at the passenger seat.<p>

His heart stopped.

The passenger seat was empty. The seatbelt was undone. The book lay at the bottom of the car; the cover had been torn off by a large shard of glass from the broken windshield.

Teddy was gone.

His name tore from Harry's lips in a choked whisper. Harry thrust his hand into the broken dashboard for his wand. He winced as shards of glass stabbed at his fingers but he ignored them. Seeing that his wand wasn't there, he unbuckled his seatbelt, jerking his head back to look in the back seat. He saw nothing but the rest of the trashed car. He forced the door open with his foot after pushing yielded nothing and stumbled out of the car, landing on all fours. He hissed in pain as his hand landed on a jagged piece of wood that pierced the flesh.

"Teddy!" he called out, raising himself to his knees and ripping the piece of wood out of his hand. The wood felt familiar in his hand somehow…

Harry looked down. Lying in his left hand, covered in the blood of his right, was an uneven piece of holly. He looked around at the ground. There were three other pieces just like it, all in varying sizes, a small strand of red connecting two of them.

His wand had been shattered.

The wand that had withstood the attack in Godric's Hollow, that had held up enough that the Elder Wand had been able to repair it, the wand that but for four long months had served him faithfully for nearly thirteen years, had finally met its end.

In a car crash.

The Dursleys would be in hysterics if they ever found out about this.

Harry didn't know how long he knelt there, staring at the broken fragments of his wand, but eventually he shook himself out of it. This was no time to be mourning a piece of wood, no matter how much it felt like he'd just lost a limb. Teddy's life was on the line. He had to find him. He _would_ find him. He got up, tossing the fragments of wood aside and stepping away from the wrecked car, though no matter how much he told himself to forget about his wand and focus on Teddy, it took a considerable amount of effort to not look back as he faced the road again.

"TEDDY!" he shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth. He'd started taking shorter breaths. "TEDDY!" he bellowed again, turning around. "Where did you go?" he muttered. "He can't've gotten far." Harry tried not to dwell on _why_ he might not have gotten that far…. "TEDDY!" He strained his ears, but he heard nothing but the echoing of his own voice.

Frustrated, he reached for his wand, groaning when he remembered it had broken beyond repair. _Homenum revelio_ was out, as was _sonorous_. He wasn't even sure where he was anymore. He'd been heading south the last time he'd checked his wand, but he had no idea where he was heading now.

Shaking his head before shouting again, he looked along the street they'd crashed on. He could only hope that Teddy would keep to the road. He knew better than to stray into the forest; Harry and Andromeda had raised him with more sense than that.

He hoped.

He prayed.

The moon was almost full, and just barely enough to see by. Harry shouted his godson's name again, deciding to quickly double back the way they'd come to see if Teddy had gone that way, or even to see if there was any more traffic out this late at night and if they would help him. He yelled "TEDDY!" continuously as he ran, squinting in the dark, trying to make out if any shadows looked humanoid in nature. His eyes kept trailing along the ground, even as he prayed that he wouldn't stumble on any small, prone figures—

Harry shook his head violently and continued to sprint up the road, still shouting Teddy's name, determinedly staring straight ahead. So focused was he on straining his ears to pick up every gust of wind that he almost didn't see the road end rather suddenly. He skidded to a halt, unable to believe what he was seeing.

The street before him had disappeared, the part that he was standing on ending in a jagged cliff that led to a black abyss that had no discernable bottom. Harry stood at the edge, panting, trying to catch his breath back. He looked up, but saw nothing but more blackness. The entire street that he and Teddy had just driven down had vanished.

The edge of the street itself…It was almost as though it had been…eaten away.

Harry took a deep breath, raised his trembling hands to his mouth once more, and screamed his godson's name as loudly as he could. It echoed ominously in the darkness.

There was no answer.

With a howl of frustration, Harry turned to go back the way they had been headed. His foot kicked something as he started to run again, and what sounded like a small glass bottle started to roll away from him. Harry looked down, just barely able to make out what he had just kicked. Picking up the bottle, he squinted as he looked at the label, which, as far as he could make out, simply said "Health Drink." Puzzled, not really trusting any kind of strange substance whose origins he was unaware of, he nevertheless pocketed the bottle, wishing that he'd thought to grab his mokeskin bag before setting off.

He stopped short.

His mokeskin bag.

It was in the trunk of the car.

With his Firebolt.

Harry swore violently, cursing himself for being dumber than Goyle on a bad day. How could he have forgotten his Firebolt?! He ran as fast as he could back to the car. The trunk had been smashed from a fallen branch so that it was partially open, making any kind of key or unlocking charm unnecessary, thankfully. He wrenched the lid open all the way, sticking his hand in and fumbling for his broomstick and the bag that was unfortunately jammed somewhere in the back. He bit back a cry of pain as splinters pierced his hand – he was not having the best of luck with wooden objects today.

He wrenched the broom out of the trunk, groaning in dismay when he took in the state of it. It wasn't as bad off as his old Nimbus had been, but it wasn't going to fly any time soon either. Shoving down a lump in his throat — gift from Sirius or not, it was still just a broomstick, and he had a six-year-old child to find — Harry dug through the back of the trunk, past the spare tire that was now useless and past the collection of articles from the American Wizarding newspaper, the _Freeman's Owl_, and let out a whoop of delight as his scratched fingers finally grasped the edge of the bag.

He jerked it out and opened it, hoping that he'd have _something_ useful. He'd left the Cloak and the Map at home, but hopefully he still had a few decent healing potions stored away. A quick look told him that aside from a few bottles of Essence of Dittany and several packages of bandages Hermione had insisted he pack as he was going to a largely Muggle-populated area, he had few things that would be considered useful, no matter how tempting that bottle of Firewhiskey was looking at the moment. He pulled the Health Drink out of his pocket and stored it inside the pouch. If he were to find anything else useful he'd be able to store it in here; Hermione had somehow managed to equip the pouch with an Undetectable Extension Charm in addition to whatever other enchantments had already been added to it.

He could even store a body if necessary…

Harry banged his head on the trunk of the car. He had to stop thinking like that. He _couldn't_ think like that. He would find Teddy. He had a feeling that Teddy wouldn't be in the best shape, but if he was well enough to get so far away from the car then he couldn't be too badly hurt. He would find him, and they would go home.

Together.

No matter what.

Harry would make sure of it, or he would die trying.

For Remus. For Tonks.

For Teddy.

He hurried down the road, still calling for his missing godson, heedless of the fog beginning to gather around him.


	2. Busy people going nowhere

"Teddy?" Harry called out once again, squinting through the fog as he ran, searching desperately for any sign of movement. He'd been jogging for several minutes and he hadn't come across anyone or anything. He wanted to roar in frustration but he didn't want to scare Teddy if he was around. He just wanted to hear his voice, to hold him in his arms again, to make sure his little boy was all right…

It didn't matter that Teddy wasn't actually his. It never had. It never would.

He could barely see anything. It wasn't quite pitch-black out, but the fog certainly did nothing to help. He shouted Teddy's name again, willing himself to hear _something_ other than his own footsteps or echoing voice.

But nothing came. The darkness was silent.

Harry slowed down to a brisk walk, unable to keep the pace anymore. Either he was growing old, which made no sense at twenty-three, or the crash had hurt him more than he realized.

He blinked in surprise when suddenly there were buildings in his field of vision. At last, he'd reached a town of some kind. He nearly laughed in relief; sure that someone would be here who could help track down his godson. He ran by what looked like a convenience store to get a proper look at the town, but the fog blocked most of his view so it didn't have any effect.

He raised his hands to his mouth once more and bellowed "TEDDY!" as loud as he could. Panting, he waited for an answer. After a few seconds, he turned in a different direction and tried again.

Nothing.

"_TEDDY!" _His breaths were coming shorter again. He started to sweat. His eyes were watering. _"TEDDY!"_

"Um…Excuse me?"

Harry spun his head around so fast he cricked his neck. Directly behind him, looking like she had just stepped out of the convenience store, staring at him with a bemused expression on her face, was a pale woman carrying a large paper bag in her arms. She shifted it so she could push her shoulder-length dark brown hair out of her matching brown eyes. In the hand still holding the bag she also clutched a lit wand, which illuminated the wrinkles on her face, as well as her light blue cardigan and ankle-length gray skirt.

"You were…shouting for someone named Teddy?" she asked, moving slightly closer but still maintaining a safe distance.

"Yeah," said Harry breathlessly. "He's my godson, he—there was a car accident—"

"A car accident?" the witch exclaimed in surprise. "Well, that would explain your hands, then."

"Huh?" Harry looked down at his hands. They were sticky with blood and it looked like he still had some splinters and shards of glass wedged in them. He hadn't even felt the pain until she'd pointed out the injuries. "Right…"

"Hang on, I'll—"

"No, it's okay," Harry protested, holding up a hand. "I've got a little dittany, I'll take care of it."

"You're sure?" she asked, concerned. "I _am _a Healer, perhaps I should take a look—"

"I'm not worried about me, I'm worried about my godson," Harry spat in exasperation. "I couldn't find him anywhere, have you seen a little boy, about six? His hair's…" He hesitated, then looked at her wand again to reaffirm it was there before pressing on. "Well he's a Metamorphmagus so it could be anything, but he knows to try for something bright and noticeable if he gets lost, so…"

"Your godson's a Metamorphmagus?" the witch repeated, a different tone creeping into her American accent as she stepped closer to get a better look at him, her eyes straining to get a glimpse of his forehead. Harry forced down a groan; he'd recognize that kind of behavior anywhere. "You're not Harry Potter, are you?"

Resigned to his fate, Harry nodded impatiently.

"Have you seen him?" he persisted.

"No, sorry," said the witch, shaking her head. "Oh, I'm Beverly Hazle, by the way," she went on, sticking a hand out for him to shake, seemingly not caring about the blood. "I'm a Healer over at Alchemilla Hospital."

"Nice to meet you," said Harry slightly distractedly, shaking her hand but letting go quickly. "Where exactly are we, anyway?"

"Oh, this is Silent Hill," she answered. "It's a quiet little resort town, but business has been slow the past few years."

"Is it always this foggy?"

"'Fraid so. We rarely see the sun."

"Mm." Something in the back of his mind itched, but he shook it off and turned back to Hazle. "Do you think you could keep an eye out for Teddy for me?"

"Of course, of course," she replied immediately. "A missing child all alone in this town…I'll do my best to find him."

"Thank you," said Harry sincerely.

"You said his hair would change to something bright if he got lost?" Hazle asked. "A Metamorphmagus…I've never met one, he sounds fascinating."

_He's a little boy who's probably hurt and terrified with no one to help him,_ Harry refrained from snarling. Instead he said, as calmly as he could, "Yeah, it's happened a couple times before in Diagon Alley in Britain, big crowds, you know."

"I can imagine. Is there any particular color he likes?"

"Well he's been wearing a bright green all day so it could be that, but the last few times he got lost he turned it bright orange so we could spot him more easily."

"My, my," said Healer Hazle, smiling slightly. "It certainly sounds like you've got him trained nicely."

"He's not some kind of animal," said Harry sternly, feeling a sudden irrational surge of anger.

"Of course he isn't," said Hazle, bowing her head in acquiescence before abruptly changing the subject. "We have a small police station not too far from here, you could try checking in with them."

"That'd be brilliant. D'you think you could tell me where it is?"

"Certainly, certainly." She stepped forward and pointed down the road they were standing on. "It's straight down this road for a long while, eventually you take a left onto Bloch Street, then go across the bridge onto Sagan Street, and then it should be on the left on the corner."

"Turn left, cross the bridge, should be on the left?"

"Yes, that's it." She smiled again. "I'd direct you down Finney Street but it's cut off because of construction."

"Okay, thank you," said Harry, walking forward again.

"Any time, dear, any time!" she called after him. He raised one of his hands in a wave before continuing back into the darkness.

It was only as he started to walk away that he realized how dark it really was without wandlight. He had to blink several times and squint even harder in the fog while he waited for his eyes to adjust. As he did so, a cold realization slammed into him like a Bludger.

Beverly Hazle was a witch.

She could use magic.

She had a wand.

He, Harry, didn't bother at all to take any kind of advantage of this fact.

_Damn it!_ Harry scolded himself. _I should've asked her to do _homenum revelio_!_ Swearing under his breath for not thinking of it while he'd been talking to her, he quickly turned back around, but she'd disappeared into the fog. There wasn't even a trace of the light from her wand.

"…Healer Hazle?" he tried calling tentatively. It came out almost in a squeak. He cleared his throat and tried again, much louder this time. "Healer Hazle!"

His call for her did as much good as calling for Teddy had done thus far.

"Damn it," he muttered, turning around once more, heading back down the street and shouting for his godson endlessly into the darkness.

It wasn't long before he realized how cold it had gotten. It felt like it should still be winter even though it was the middle of May. He'd heard that New England was much warmer in late spring and summer than it was in the United Kingdom; he couldn't figure out why it would be so cold now. Maybe it had something to do with the fog, or maybe it was always this cold at night, he didn't know.

His glasses kept fogging up as well. He kept trying to reach for his wand to cast _impervius _on them, but each time his hand went to his pocket out of habit he was forcefully reminded that it wasn't there. Several times he had to stop and polish his glasses manually, something he hadn't done since he'd come of age.

He stuck to the road as much as possible; though his instincts screamed at him to go further into the town to search for Teddy, and though Remus's words of Harry's instincts nearly always being right continuously echoed through his head, he knew that if both of them got lost it wouldn't be helpful to either of them. It wasn't like he could see much beside the street, and even if he could he had a chilling feeling that there wouldn't be much to see anyway.

The emptiness of the town had finally caught his attention. Except for Hazle, Silent Hill seemed to be entirely deserted. Harry couldn't process it, but the more of the town he took in, the more it seemed to fit. The broken roads, the dying gardens choked by brown weeds, the boarded up houses, all of it implied that no one had lived here for years. Harry started to wonder if he'd just invented Hazle to cope with the loneliness. If he had, it would definitely help if his imagination brought her back right about now.

What felt like hours later even though it was probably only a few minutes, another disturbing realization occurred to Harry, this one more horrifying to him than any of the others he'd experienced since he noticed that Teddy was missing. As the knowledge grew within his mind, the urge to scream grew stronger, and it wasn't to shout his godson's name.

He was entirely alone for the first time in his life.

As the thought came to him, he had to reflect on what his life had been to make sure it was true. He'd felt alone at the Dursleys, of course, the feeling only increasing each summer that he was forced to return…but the Dursleys had_ been_ there. They were a constant human presence, in the house at least if not his cupboard. And at Hogwarts…No matter how determined his fellow students had been to cast him aside, he always had Ron and Hermione if not at least one of them at his side at all times. And if he hadn't…There was always Hagrid. There would've been Hedwig. The castle wouldn't have been bloody empty.

And Voldemort…He'd always had to face Voldemort alone, almost every single time except for the last…but for as monstrous as Voldemort was, he was still essentially human. There was a distinct presence Harry had been fighting.

This intangible sense of isolation…Harry had no idea how to fight that.

He almost turned around to seek out that Hazle woman again. The feeling that he'd made her up out of desperation grew stronger and stronger. Well, he was definitely starting to get desperate now. It was a bitter pill to swallow, this sudden realization that he had never been truly alone in his life until this moment.

Even in the Forbidden Forest…

Harry came to an abrupt halt as he stared in front of him. The bridge Hazle had spoken of was a drawbridge, and it had been raised. There was a building off to the side of the road that looked like it had a control room. It was the only building Harry had come across that had a light on, though it was dim. Harry's heart rose. Maybe Teddy was there!

"TEDDY!" he shouted as he ran over to it and up the stairs, wrenching the door open and heading inside. It was empty. Cursing, he blinked as his eyes adjusted to the dim light. On top of the control panel was an L-shaped torch. Harry laughed aloud in relief as he flicked it on. The light nearly blinded him, and he immediately pointed it at the control panel to see better.

His heart sank. He needed a key to activate the controls. He moved the flashlight rapidly around, but there was no sign of a key anywhere. However, carved into the side of the wall by the window, was a small sign of the Deathly Hallows.

Harry gaped at the tiny triangular eye. What could that be doing there? Were there others like old Xeno living in America as well? But why would they want to carve it into a wall…

The more he looked at it, the more it seemed to almost glow with an eerie red light. The color reminded him uneasily of Voldemort's eyes, for some reason.

His scar itched and he scratched at his forehead.

His hand froze. The itch had disappeared. Had he imagined it? Was his scar really starting to hurt again? But it couldn't be…Voldemort was dead, and Harry was no longer a Horcrux. That couldn't have happened. He must have imagined it. The fog and the isolation were starting to get to him, that was all it was. That had to be the only explanation.

Harry shook his head violently and shone the torch around the control panel again, checking everywhere to make sure he didn't miss anything. The only remotely useful thing he could see was another bottle labeled Health Drink tucked away in a corner on the floor. He pocketed it absentmindedly, though it did propel him into fimally taking out the dittany and using it on his hands, which healed instantly. He wiped the blood off on his jacket and headed back out, torch pointed in front of him.

The town was deserted. No one would miss it.


	3. There was no time for reason

Harry wrapped an arm around himself, wishing he'd thought to bring a warmer jacket. At least he could see partially better now; the torch didn't exactly pierce through the fog but it was better than it had been before. Sticking it in the pocket of his jeans and angling it so it shone out in front of him, he kept closer to the side of the road this time. He could just barely make out the shapes of all the houses alongside it. Each one was boarded up and obviously neglected. Once he came across a door that didn't have boards nailed across it, but it wouldn't open. The lock appeared to have been jammed. He called out for his godson just in case he had crawled through a window or something, but there was no answer.

It was a couple houses later before he found one where the front door had been left ajar. He ran to it immediately, wondering if Teddy had been the one to open the door, or indeed if anyone might have been living there. He paused when he came to the door, knocking on it tentatively and pushing it open completely when he didn't receive an answer.

"Hello?" he called out. "Is anyone in here?" The house looked fairly clean for one that had been deserted who knew how long ago. There was barely even any dust. He took his torch from his pocket and waved it around, but didn't see anything too out of the ordinary, just a small alcove serving as an entrance and a hallway that probably lead to the rest of the house. He went down the hallway into a kind of sitting room with a large table in the middle, surrounded by sofas. There was a kitchen attached to it with another bottle labeled Health Drink resting on one of the counters. Harry had no idea why he kept storing all of these things in his pouch when he had no idea what they were, but it was as if something kept compelling him to do so. All of the doors that would've lead to the rest of the house were jammed, so Harry went back into the sitting room to check out something that had caught his attention earlier.

There was a folded piece of paper in the middle of the table. It stood out from anything else Harry had seen so far in this town because it seemed so…clean. Harry picked it up and unfolded it, causing a small object to fall out. He bent down and picked it up. It was a key, with a small tag on the end that said, "Drawbridge." Smiling in triumph, Harry put the key into his pocket and took a closer look at the piece of paper, the smile instantly fading from his face.

At first glance it just appeared to be a bunch of different-colored scribbles made with crayons, but Harry could just barely make out the shape of a red house in the middle, surrounded by jagged green lines meant to be grass, with three stick figures standing in front of it. In the upper right-hand corner was what could pass for a yellow circle with a smiley face inside it. The top half was almost completely colored bright blue, matching the color of one of the stick-figure's heads.

The other two stick figures had brown and pink heads, and were drawn to be holding the hands of the smaller, blue-headed one in the middle.

Harry stared at the drawing, remembering when he'd gone over to Andromeda's and found Teddy putting the finishing touches on what was meant to be the sky. He'd showed it proudly to his godfather, explaining what each part of it meant. Harry had swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat, as well as suppressing the jealously he'd suddenly felt at how Teddy actually knew what his parents had looked like at his age, and told him that he was already a far better artist than his Uncle Harry could ever hope to be.

_I wasn't lying, either_, Harry thought to himself as he folded up the drawing once more and put it in his mokeskin bag. He headed back outside and set off for the controls to the drawbridge once again, confident that Teddy would meet him there. It didn't stop him from calling for him a couple more times along the way, though.

Once he got back inside the control room he inserted the key and started fiddling with the controls. He couldn't help glancing at the carved sign of the Deathly Hallows again out of the corner of his eye. This time, his scar definitely itched, but it passed within seconds. Frowning but pushing it out of his mind for the moment, Harry turned back to the controls for the drawbridge. It took a couple of tries, but eventually he got both sides of the bridge to go down instead of further up. Harry went back down to the road and was about to head across the drawbridge when he saw him.

Teddy was standing in the middle of the bridge, hair bright orange and coming down almost to his shoulders. He smiled at Harry before turning around and running off into the fog.

"TEDDY!" Harry called after him, sprinting across the bridge as fast as he could. Teddy's hair was glowing like a beacon in the fog. "Teddy, wait!" He wasn't hurt. He was okay. Harry nearly cried in relief. "Please, stop!" Why was he running? Did he think he was in trouble? Harry was too happy to see him alive and well to even think about punishing him.

Once he made it across the drawbridge, the little blob of orange had disappeared. Starting to panic again, Harry headed slightly to the left, thinking that he saw Teddy start to drift that way before he left his sight. He blinked as the police station suddenly came into view. It looked like his godson had had the same idea he did. The door was wide open. Harry grinned as he headed inside, not even caring that it appeared to be as deserted as the rest of the town.

The police station was dimly lit as well, so he turned off the torch to conserve its batteries; he didn't know how long they would last. There was what looked like a map of the town sitting on the front desk, and Harry pocketed it as he glanced around the atrium. There were quite a few things knocked over, little inconsequential things like plants and a dustbin in the corner. Suddenly, he heard a door close somewhere else in the building.

"Teddy?" Harry called out as he walked over to a door on his left, opening it to see a small office space. All of the books and paperwork had been scattered onto the floor, and a chair had been knocked over. There was also a small radio screeching with a loud static that had fallen to the floor, but Harry ignored it. He smiled slightly at the mess, remembering all the times he'd seen Tonks knock something over or trip over the umbrella stand in Grimmauld Place. Teddy really was starting to turn into her.

There was another door on the other side of the room past the mess. Harry opened it and saw that it led into a bathroom; just inside the doorway was another dustbin that had been knocked over. Harry chuckled and called Teddy's name out again, sounding almost cheerful as he added, "I know you're in here!" He looked down the line of rather filthy-looking stalls with the doors barely hanging on by the hinges and saw what looked like the hind legs of a big black dog sticking out from one of the open stalls. His heart suffered a slight pang at the thought of Sirius but he pushed it down. "Oi!" he called out to it, bending down to pat his leg to beckon it over. It backed out and looked right at him, and Harry had to bite back a shout.

If he ever thought that Sirius's Animagus form had looked like a grim, that idea was immediately killed. This dog was even darker than Sirius had been, looking like it was made up entirely out of pitch-black smoke. Its whole body was covered with tight silver chains that were rusty with blood and seemed to be cutting into its flesh. Its front claws seemed much longer than normal and looked razor sharp. Its glowing red eyes flashed at Harry as what looked suspiciously like blood dripped from its long snout.

Something else, something more solid, was clinging to the monster's fangs.

"Teddy," Harry said in a voice softer than a whisper. He dropped the torch and grabbed the only thing he could get his hands on, which turned out to be one of the taps from the line of sinks right next to him. Thankfully it broke off easily and he threw it at the dog's head. It collided with its target and the dog back away, growling menacingly and making the hairs on the back of Harry's head stand on end. Harry tried to rip off another of the taps but it clung to the moldy porcelain. The beast was still growling, trying to run for Harry, who dived out of the way and slid along the floor to pick up the tap he'd already thrown. Getting a firm hold on it, he slammed it into the dog's snout as it tried to come at him again. It whimpered but wouldn't let up, coming around for another attack.

Harry struggled to his feet and wrenched his arm back before slamming the tap into the side of the dog's head again. The dog went down and was about to get up again but Harry wasn't about to give it that chance. He kept slamming the tap into the dog's head over and over until it stopped moving, then did it a few more times just to make sure it stayed down. Then he got up and ran to the stall he'd seen it come out of, bracing himself for the worst.

But there was no small, torn-up body that he'd been gearing himself up for. All that was there was a normal bathroom stall…aside from the fact that it had been coated almost entirely in blood.

It looked like whatever had been sitting on the toilet had exploded. When Harry looked up he even saw blood dripping from the ceiling. The toilet bowl was also filled to the brim with blood, and there were some chunky bits floating in it that Harry tried not to look too long at. He figured the dog must've been drinking from it and started to hope against hope that Teddy hadn't come here after all.

He especially hoped that the dog didn't have any friends.

Harry checked the other stalls, but the rest of them seemed normal, if run-down and filthy. He grimaced and went into the cleanest one, which was unfortunately the one right next to the blood-covered stall. He shut the stall door as best he could, as it was partially hanging off its hinges, and quickly relieved himself. He didn't fancy being too exposed in this town, not after what just happened.

When he was done, he looked down and saw a thin, bent pipe sticking out from the stall next to him that wasn't coated in blood. Zipping up, he bent down and wrenched it free. Exiting the stall, he tried a few practice swipes with it. It felt light and comfortable in his hand, and he regretted not finding it before his fight with the dog. Said creature was still lying in a pool of blood, and Harry gingerly stepped over it, pipe held firmly in hand, picking up the discarded torch and pocketing it once more as he exited the bathroom.

It didn't feel safe for him not to carry a weapon anymore. He still sorely missed his wand, but the pipe would have to do for now. He only hoped that he wouldn't run into anything else.

He prayed that Teddy hadn't run into something already.

The office was oddly silent when he entered it again. It took him several seconds to realize that the radio was no longer buzzing with static. Harry went back out to the atrium and nearly had a heart attack when the static started another high-pitched squeal. He jerked his head around to glare at the still-open office door in disgust, but was distracted by the sight of another dog…thing near the exit. Holding the pipe at the ready, Harry swung when the dog jumped up to attack him. The dog fell to the ground and Harry wasn't about to give it a chance to regain its footing. He beat it over and over until it stopped moving and backed away, panting. He started to head for the exit again when the dog began twitching, and he impatiently stomped on its head. It lay still.

The radio died down again in that instant as well.

Harry looked at the doorway into the office for some time. Coming to an abrupt decision, he went back in, picked up the radio, and shoved it into the pocket of his jacket by the map before turning the torch back on and heading back out into Silent Hill.


	4. A state of isolation

Harry hadn't even taken more than five steps when the radio started acting up again. He shined his torch around frantically and saw a couple of the grim-like creatures walking slowly towards him. He sprinted in the other direction, passing more boarded up houses as he ran. The road ended in another chasm ahead of him, forcing him to double back and run past the dogs. One of them lunged at him as he passed but he dodged it with more ease than he'd expected, grateful for those three years of Auror training. He hadn't actually _had_ to take all three years but he'd insisted, and he was certainly glad of it now.

He wondered if he should actually go back and kill those two dogs so he wouldn't have to worry about them running across Teddy or so they wouldn't be there once he tried to leave _with_ Teddy, but he wasn't so sure that they didn't have some way of coming back to life. Besides, finding Teddy as quickly as possible was more important right now.

The static spiked sharply and Harry thought he heard large wings flapping ominously somewhere near his right. Not wanting to take any chances, Harry immediately headed left, glancing behind him quickly. He saw some sort of shape through the fog but nothing distinct, and he wasn't exactly keen on getting a closer look.

Further down the street he was currently on, Harry came across a post office, the door of which wasn't boarded up at all. Harry ran up to it and pushed it, groaning when it wouldn't open. Then his torch lit upon the words "Pull To Open," and Harry, feeling foolish, pulled in the handle instead, sighing in relief when the door let him in.

"Teddy?" he called out, shining the torch through the darkness. The light hit nothing but empty owl cages that were far cleaner than he was used to; it was as if no owls had occupied any of the cages in some time. Silent Hill must've been one of those towns where magical and nonmagical people could live together peacefully…unless this was an entirely wizarding town. He should've asked Healer Hazle about it.

His torch lit up the front desk and he had to swallow yet another lump in his throat. A large owl cage was covering most of the front desk; it looked identical to the one that used to house Hedwig. Harry had never gotten another owl, but he had bought a screech owl for Ginny that she had named Lothatug. He remembered being a little worried about her taste in names if and when they ever started having children; Arnold was fine but then she came up with things like Pigwidgeon and Lothatug. Grinning slightly at the memory, Harry picked up a pen that was lying next to the cage, figuring he could mark the streets that had been cut off on the map and check off all the places he'd tried. He then went around the desk and tried to open the door to the back room. Thankfully, it opened.

It was pitch black inside. Harry checked his radio, but it was completely silent, and the light from his torch indicated that there weren't any grims or…anything else within the room. Harry called out for his godson just in case, but as he expected he didn't hear an answer. He was about to leave when his torch illuminated something on the floor, something that had him walking forward and bending down for a closer look.

At first glance, Harry thought it was the sign of the Deathly Hallows again, but he realized it was far more elaborate than that, and much larger than the ones he'd seen so far, almost taking up the entire floor. Within the circle that would've signified the Resurrection Stone was another triangle, this one upside down, with another right-side up one inside of that. The innermost one had been filled in completely but for a small circle in the very center. Lines had been drawn from the points of the upside down triangle to connect to the innermost circle, and the points from the filled-in triangle connected to the points of the outermost triangle. The entire thing was dark red, almost brown.

Harry ran a finger gingerly across the bottom line of the main triangle. It felt like dried blood, as he'd feared. He suddenly wished Hermione was with him; he didn't know if this was some kind of Muggle occult thing or some kind of Dark magic he'd never encountered before, but he figured she would know what it was. He took another look at the entire thing and nearly dropped his torch when he saw something in the exact center of the symbol that hadn't been there before. It looked like Teddy's stuffed wolf from back at Andromeda's house, only it was tearing at the seams and looked like it too had been dipped in blood at some point. Harry walked over, picked it up, and was immediately blinded by a pain in his scar.

He screamed, hunching over and clutching his forehead with the hand that held the stuffed wolf. Dimly, he was aware of some kind of animal noise that sounded vaguely like a wolf howling, if that wolf had just been stabbed. He staggered back into the main room, desperate to get away from that awful noise.

As soon as he made it through the doorway, the howling stopped and the pain in his scar immediately died down. Harry shook his head and rubbed his scar with his suddenly empty hand. Glancing at it, he figured that he must have dropped the stuffed animal in the back room. He turned to go back through but the door had swung closed behind him, and no matter how hard he pushed it wouldn't open anymore.

Turning back to the room he was in now, he was struck by how dim everything suddenly was. He waved the torch around and staggered back into the door.

The cages were suddenly thrown about all over the place, and they had turned black with rust. The windows were merely black squares that suddenly held bars. The cage Harry had noticed earlier looked as though something had erupted inside it while he was in the back room. It was just like the bathroom stall; there was blood and…other bits everywhere, and he was nearly sick when he saw the black, sticky feathers floating in the puddles of gore.

His torch lit up something shiny in the center of the bottom of the cage. Burying his nose in the crook of his elbow to stave off the stench, Harry crept closer to get a better look. It appeared to be a key of some kind. He picked it up quickly and wiped it on his jacket, backing up as quickly as he could and wishing he could cast _tergeo_ or _scourgify_. It had a small laminated tag on it that read "Pink Moon Suite: Riverside Motel." Harry pulled out the map and quickly found the Riverside Motel near the upper right corner of the map. It didn't look too far from his current location, but he was willing to bet that Crichton St. was probably destroyed somehow as well. Nevertheless, this was the only clue he had, and it was better than flying around blindly.

Pocketing the map, he raised his hand and rubbed at his scar. It didn't hurt him anymore, but the fact that it had done so at all, and that it had been more than just an itch this time, worried him greatly. Could he have something to do with this town…?

He shook his head to clear it. He couldn't dwell on it now. Even if Teddy wasn't missing, he didn't feel comfortable staying in one place. Who knows how many more of those dog things there were, and he had to keep his guard up if Voldemort really was involved.

He had to find Teddy and get out of this place as soon as possible. Checking the map once more, he headed back out into Silent Hill.

Blackness surrounded him on all sides. The torch barely did anything to help, but he hadn't taken more than three steps before the radio suddenly went crazy. He swung the torch around frantically and almost fell over when its light fell upon a new monstrosity, this one airborne.

The large, bat-like wings jutted from the creature's misshapen head. The rest of the elongated body was covered in what looked like a filthy, bloodstained sheet. The arms had been crossed over the monster's chest, held there by several small knives pierced through its hands. In fact, every inch of it appeared to be run through with knives and daggers of varying sizes.

Harry gaped at it, unable to move, as the flying…thing flapped its way towards him, kicking him in the face when it came close enough. It was enough to snap him out of it, and Harry quickly raised his pipe, hitting the creature in the side. It shrieked in pain, a high-pitched shriek that set the hair on the back of Harry's neck on end. When it lifted its leg for another kick, Harry hit it in the side again. It took a few more blows to bring it down, and even then it continued to twitch and shriek, the radio almost matching its pitch. Harry stomped on it in disgust and it stopped moving at last. The radio died down as well, but there was still a faint static issuing from it. Harry took that to mean that there were other monsters nearby, and he tightened his grip on the pipe.

As he'd expected, Crichton St. ended in a black abyss. He couldn't think what could be causing all of these roads to end so abruptly, but he knew that he didn't want to meet whatever it was. Reluctant though he was to take the light off the road, he still marked the ways that were blocked on the map as he ran. The static kicked up again, and he saw two more grims heading his way with one of the flying creatures following swiftly behind. He had to kill one of the dogs and beat away the flying thing to get away, though he suffered a bite in the leg for it. Limping away as quickly as he could, he headed down Midway Ave. and paused so he could sprinkle some more dittany on his leg. It nearly spilled everywhere since his hand was shaking so much, and the first bottle was already running low because of it. He still had two bottles left, but if this kept up he didn't know what he would do.

As he took a shortcut onto Low St., the static died down slightly but was still present. It seemed as though it would never stop issuing from the radio. Harry was longing to turn it off — the static was starting to drive him mad — but he didn't want to be attacked from behind. With a jolt he realized that he hadn't called out for Teddy in some time, but he was afraid that it would alert the monsters to his current location.

Finally, he nearly ran headlong into a low black iron fence. Following it, he came across a dark gray building with the word "Motel" painted on a large black sign near the roof. The door itself seemed to have another jammed lock, but the gate to the staff entrance was wide open. Harry quickly ran through it and slammed the gate behind him.

He swung his flashlight around and it lit upon yet another one of those flying monsters that aimed a kick at him. One of the knives embedded in its leg grazed Harry's shoulder, and Harry impatiently swung his pipe hard and got it in the side. He beat it over and over until it stopped screaming, slamming his foot into its head until it stopped twitching.

Panting and using up the rest of the first of the dittany on his shoulder, he swung the torch around what looked like a small parking lot meant for the staff. He saw a couple more bottles labeled Health Drink, as well as a small hairpin, on the pavement beside a large, rusted blue truck, and he was able to look inside the shattered window for any other supplies. The dark tan interior was stained in what Harry could only assume was blood. A foul stench was emanating from the small space behind the seats, and Harry hesitantly shined his torch in the direction of the smell.

It was a body of an old man with graying blond hair, his torn clothes soaked through with blood. It looked as though large chunks of flesh had been…eaten away from him, but unlike the road itself, these were much smaller…as though one of the dogs had gotten him. Harry looked around the rest of the truck. There were large tears in the fabric of the seats, so there had clearly been a struggle. Taking another look, Harry glimpsed a small, pristine-looking piece of paper peaking out of the man's pocket. Hesitantly, Harry reached out a hand and quickly yanked it out, repressing a shudder when his hand came into contact with one of the gaping wounds the man had died from. Wiping his hand quickly on his jacket, Harry took a closer look at the paper he'd just taken.

_The hunted coughs out its last breath_

_And a hand is raised to the heavens_

_Begging for salvation_

_Wishing only to open the door_

Frowning, Harry found that he could make neither heads nor tails of this…poem? He had no idea what any of it was supposed to mean, but just like with the Health Drinks he felt some kind of compulsion to hold onto it. Maybe if he ran into anyone else, they might be able to tell him what it meant. He got out of the car and shone his torch around in the darkness. He couldn't see any other monsters, and the radio was still silent, but he didn't feel comfortable staying out in the opening any longer. Besides, with any luck, this was the motel the key he'd found was meant for.

He headed up the ramp to the door and tried to open it. It seemed locked, so he tried using the hairpin. He was able to unlock the door, but the hairpin fell apart in his hands. Throwing the now-useless pieces away on the ground, Harry opened the door.

The radio was completely silent, and Harry was able to breathe for the first time in what felt like weeks even though it had probably not even been a full hour yet. The interior of the room looked almost…normal. The walls all had comfortable-looking chairs lined up against them, there were a couple of arcade machines, and there was even a pool table. A large stuffed deer head was hung on the wall near the front desk, which made Harry a little uneasy; ever since he found out about his father's Animagus form and his mother's Patronus, he'd developed a healthy dislike of stuffed trophies, venison, and anything else having to do with dying deer. It was one of the main reasons he was so reluctant to come to America in the first place, but as he'd had little choice…

As he shined his torch around the room, he caught yet another small Deathly Hallows sign glowing on the wall. His scar itched again and he resolutely ignored it. Turning around, he saw another map lying on the pool table, this time of the motel itself. He searched it and quickly found the Pink Moon Suite on the other side of the motel. It didn't look too far away, and so far there didn't seem to be any monsters within the motel rooms themselves. However, considering one of them had made it into the parking lot, Harry wasn't about to take it easy just yet.


	5. Are you hiding away, lost

Before heading out into the motel proper, Harry quickly checked inside the manager's office, which also, thankfully, looked quite normal. He hesitantly called out his godson's name; he had no idea where the boy was but he had to be somewhere in the town, and this motel was as good a place as any for him to hide. The normality of the location thus far had given Harry some amount of hope; he could only pray that he was right.

The door to "Private" wouldn't budge no matter how hard Harry tried, not to mention the only other door that must've lead out to a different part of the motel, and there was no sign of a six-year-old boy anywhere. There was, however, a copy of the _Freeman's Owl_ dated nearly two weeks ago, one that Harry must've missed. The headline caught his eye immediately; he knew he would've remembered it had he read it. There was what looked like a coffee stain on one side of it, which was a rather refreshing change from the bloodstains Harry had experienced thus far. He picked it up, shook it out, and read the front page.

**Werewolves Leaving Silent Hill?**

**A sudden decrease in local werewolf population prompts police investigation**

by Lewis Griswold

Silent Hill's own Alchemilla Hospital is well-known throughout Magical America for revolutionizing the way those suffering from lycanthropy are treated in North America. The first to give away Wolfsbane Potion freely to anyone who needs it, at no cost whatsoever, Healers William Palmer and Beverly Hazle are famous for treating any patient who comes through their doors regardless of whether or not they have health insurance. This doesn't only extend to werewolves or indeed wizards; if anyone is sick, they will treat you, no questions asked.

This, of course, has prompted a practically nation-wide migration of werewolves to the quaint little resort town that is Silent Hill. Some stay in the town itself while others may live in neighboring towns and only make the occasional trip to collect their doses of Wolfsbane for the month. A surprising number of families have uprooted their lives to live in Silent Hill so that their children will always have free treatment, free of prejudice.

At least, until recently. A quick scour of the town indicates to even the most casual of observers that the size of the town's population has significantly been cut down in recent months. Not nearly as many werewolves have been coming to Alchemilla for either Wolfsbane Potion or treatment anymore.

Some have speculated that, because similar specialized hospitals are popping up all over the country, some of the families have left this one specific area to live near one of the others, so as to avoid overpopulation. Others have suspected something more sinister about the hospital itself. So many rumors have spread that Healer Palmer himself has invited the police to make a thorough investigation in order to silence some of these allegations.

"We're doing everything we can to help our fellow man," he stated in a press conference last week. "Our great nation was founded on the basis that everyone be treated equally. We're just trying to apply that to medicine as well. If someone finds our treatment lacking, they are more than welcome to seek help elsewhere. We can only do the best we can with what we have."

Past investigations have been made to solve the mystery of how Alchemilla has been able to afford to make such an expensive potion for so many people on such a consistent basis, but those never lead to anything other than the project being privately funded from several prominent families within the nearby town of Shepherd's Glen and in Silent Hill itself. Whether or not this particular investigation will lead to a similarly innocent conclusion, only time will tell.

Harry flicked through the rest of the newspaper, but the coffee must have seeped through, thus making it completely illegible, so he set the newspaper back down. He'd hoped that it might've mentioned something about the monsters he'd just escaped from, but those must've cropped up less than a fortnight ago. He wondered why Healer Hazle hadn't felt the need to warn him about them, now that he knew that she did, in fact, exist.

Reflecting on the article he _had_ managed to read made his Auror instincts kick his mind into overdrive. From what little he could gleam from the article, it seemed as though there was much more going on than the words on the page presented. He strongly suspected foul play: More often than not, a bereaved family member who had lost a loved one in a werewolf attack would take out their revenge on everyone with lycanthropy they could find. It happened more than once in the aftermath of the war, even as those amongst Harry's generation tried to stop it; Lavender had had to talk her mother out of killing a teenage boy that wasn't even remotely connected with Greyback, just because he had also been bitten. She and Harry were among the strongest fighters against the prejudice aimed at werewolves, and Harry couldn't help getting roped into this issue as well even though it was far removed from his jurisdiction.

He only stopped thinking about it when he forced himself to remember that he had a child to find.

Going back into the reception area, he checked under the pool tables just in case Teddy might be hiding under there before heading out into the motel area proper. He had to blink to adjust to the dramatic change in setting; the sky was still pitch-black and the floor was again blotted in dark stains that he was positive wasn't coffee from the stench alone. He shined the torch out in front of him and checked the map in the dim light. The gate directly in front of him should lead to the pool, which should then lead to the Pink Moon suite.

Harry stared at the gate in front of him; it was rusted and bent and padlocked and no matter how hard Harry tried he could not remove the chains. The padlock itself had four dials on them but of course Harry didn't know the combination. He tried a few different combinations anyway, noticing that the first dial was so gummed up with some unidentifiable substance he'd rather not think about, making it stuck on the number seven. He could only hope that it was the correct number. In desperation he looked at the hinges to see if they could be lifted or broken, but no matter how hard he bashed them with the pipe they would not yield.

"Teddy!" he shouted over the gate, but no one answered.

Frowning, Harry checked the map again. If he tried to go through the gate that lead to rooms 105 to 108, he could potentially go to the pool area through the Laundromat. He looked to his right but the gate was as mangled and as locked as the one to the pool. He tried hitting the chain and the hinges with the pipe again but it came to the same result as the first time he tried. There was no padlock on this one, however. He tried calling for his godson again, but the effort was just as futile.

Directly behind him was another gate that should've lead to most of the other rooms in the motel, but that gate was in the exact same condition as the first two. His calls for Teddy were beginning to get more and more desperate. There were two smaller gates parallel to the reception room and Harry feared that they wouldn't open either, but at least one of them swung open easily.

He was about to shout Teddy's name again but closed his mouth rather quickly and immediately withdrew behind the gate. The radio spiked momentarily but fell silent as soon as Harry closed the gate.

He held it closed with one hand as he sank to the ground, leaning against the wall and panting heavily. There was a different monster in there, one he did not like the idea of facing, not with just a steel pipe that looked like it wouldn't last much longer.

Harry looked at the map again, hoping frantically that there was some way he could avoid those monsters, when his eyes fell upon a little icon that indicated stairs right in front of him. Blinking, Harry lifted the torch and saw that there were, indeed, rusty stairs that looked like they were made of metal grating, with a banister that appeared to be peeling away from them and outright missing in some places. He dashed up the stairs, taking care not to fall, and the radio slowly began emitting static again as he made it to the second floor of the motel. Nervously, he changed the angle of his torch, and found himself staring one of the new monsters in the face.

The naked, humanoid figure was crouched on all fours in almost a spidery motion that Harry had seen at the circus act George had dragged him and Ron to one time, but that person didn't have sharp, broken-off and pointed bones sticking through nearly every inch of flesh. As blood oozed from its numerous wounds, the creature locked eyes with Harry, the light of the torch shining in its large, black eyes. There was even a multi-pronged bone sticking through its _mouth…_

Harry took a slow, cautious step to the side, and the creature lunged. Harry turned and ran, slamming into a door that wouldn't open, as the creature advanced, much faster than Harry had anticipated. He tried the door next to the one he had just crushed his shoulder against, but that one wouldn't open either. The door labeled 317, however, _did_ blissfully open, and Harry quickly ducked in and slammed the door behind him. The radio static faded as the creature slammed up against the door, shrieking inhumanely, but seemed to lose interest almost immediately. Harry pressed his ear against the door, listening to the bone creature meander away, letting out a quiet sign of relief as he stood up fully and looked around.

The motel room might've been nice once, but now it was utterly demolished. The bed was torn to pieces, most likely by either one of the grims or the bone creatures, with what looked like great claw marks rendering the mattress into multiple pieces, the bloodstained sheets scattered about. The claw marks had gone so far as to tear into the walls; even the toilet was cracked, with some kind of chunks stuffed into the bowl that Harry did not want to investigate further, though he could smell them from the door. The only thing that wasn't damaged was a dresser by the wall opposite the bed, where a smashed television set stood beside a porcelain angel statue.

Harry took a closer look at the statue. It seemed so out of place that it was the only thing that held his attention. Keeping an eye on it, Harry quickly checked under the bed and braved glancing into the blood-spattered shower. He didn't want to call out for his godson anymore, no matter how strong his feeling that he was somewhere in the motel seemed to be; he couldn't draw the monsters' attention his way. If he was killed, there would be no one to save Teddy and bring him home safely.

Confirming that Teddy was indeed not in the room with him, Harry turned his attention back to the angel. Her white wings were slipped through her dark green robes and she appeared to have shoulder-length blood-red hair. Her hands were spread out on either side of her and there was a desperate, almost pleading expression on her face. Drawn to it, Harry picked up the statue and heard a kind of rattling sound. He turned the angel over and saw a hole in the bottom of the statue; shining his light through it, he could see a small, flat piece of brass wedged in there. He tried shaking it out of the statue, but the piece was too big and the hole too small.

Wondering idly how it even got in there in the first place, Harry regretfully smashed the angel against the side of the dresser. The brass piece fell to the floor and Harry picked it up. It looked like a flat square with the number _0_ carved into it and painted cobalt blue. Harry looked back down at the smashed pieces of the angel and the cracked face stared back up at him. Unless it was just his imagination, the face now wore an agonized expression. Tearing his eyes away from its remains, he took another look at the square piece, then glanced behind him at the door. He had no idea what was going on, but he had a feeling that if he figured it all out, that would make him that much closer to finding Teddy…

…but that meant that he would have to fight the monsters outside.

Harry put the bronze piece into the pouch, took up the pipe in his hands, and stood by the door, breathing deeply for several minutes and trying to gather up his courage. Finally unable to take it any longer, he kicked open the door and stepped out. The bone creature turned around at the sound of the noise and lunged at him again, making huge swipes for Harry's legs with its arms, its fingers ending in pointed bits of bone, but Harry slammed down on its head repeatedly with the pipe until it lay twitching at his feet. Even after he stomped on its head once more, the radio still hadn't calmed down, which meant that there was most likely another monster in the area. Harry shone the torch all around him but couldn't see anything, not then anyway.

He tried the door to room 318 and closed the door behind him almost without thinking, but it was only when the radio kept up its constant stream of static and his torch lit up two of the bone creatures that he realized he was not alone. The bone creatures stared back at him, seeming to be almost mesmerized by the light of the torch, but the moment Harry reached behind him to try to leave out through the door again they leapt into action. One of them swiped at his legs while the other jumped up into the air and slashed at his face. Harry swung the pipe like a Beater's bat and smashed the one that jumped back to the ground, but he fell over as the other one made contact with his left leg. Twisting to the side, he slammed the pipe into the one that had attacked him until it lay twitching at his feet before starting on the other one. He stomped on the second one's head to make sure it was dead, but when he turned around the first one had struggled to his feet again and had already started to make another swipe. Falling to the floor again, Harry used the momentum of his fall to strike the creature firmly on the head, then quickly got up and beat it over and over again even once it stopped twitching, just to make sure it really was dead this time.

He fell backward into yet another destroyed bed, his legs stinging fiercely. Taking out another bottle of dittany, he sprinkled it on the gashes in his legs until they healed. Putting them away, he looked around the room and saw that it was even more destroyed than the first one, with the dresser reduced to splinters. The bedside table was slightly more intact, however, and on top of it there was a Health Drink as well as two boxes of shotgun shells, each containing six. Even though he didn't have a shotgun, Harry felt that he might as well pocket the ammunition anyway, just in case he _did_ manage to pick up a gun somewhere. It would certainly be useful against some of these monsters he kept coming up against.

Thankfully, there wasn't anyone else in that room.

When he left the room, he saw another bone monster coming around the corner from where the stairs were. He quickly tried to open the door to room 319 but that was jammed as well, so he burst through the door to staff accommodation. It was almost comical the way two of the bone monsters were crouching on top of one of the beds while the other one was standing almost completely upright by one of the overturned tables, though it crouched down low as well as soon as Harry came in. This time, Harry raised his pipe almost immediately so he would be ready when they charged him. As two of them immediately leapt for his face, Harry didn't know how but he managed to hit both of them at once, knocking them aside. He quickly got out of the way of the third one's attack and focused on killing that one first. He had to jump over a leg attack from one of the others but he managed to kill the third one before changing his attention to the other two. Ducking another assault, he focused all his energy on the one that just attacked him, suffering another leg wound while he was occupied, but he managed to put the last one down fairly quickly as well.

He was starting to get better at this. The thought cheered him considerably.

Sprinkling some more dittany on his leg and relishing in the momentary silence of the radio, Harry looked around the various torn and bloodied beds and overturned tables that seemed to have chunks missing from them, as if one of the bone monsters had regained the use of its mouth and gnawed away at it. In the corner he found a shotgun, two additional boxes of shotgun shells, two more health drinks, and a small red ampoule filled with some dark liquid. Harry put all of the smaller items in his mokeskin pouch without even really thinking about it, slipping the steel pipe into it as well as he picked up the shotgun and tested its weight.

He'd never seen a real gun of any kind before in his life. Though he'd met a couple police officers since coming to America who he'd assumed had some kind of firearm, they'd never actually taken it out and waved them around at any point. Harry wasn't even sure how to use one. The most he knew about guns came from action movies he and Hermione had taken Ginny and Ron to when they'd started double dating after the war had ended, and those he knew didn't exactly follow the laws of reality.

He turned back to the door that lead back onto the second floor. There was at least one more monster out there, he knew, plus the three he knew to be downstairs and who knew how many others in the other rooms. He examined the shotgun carefully, even aiming it at the opposite wall and pulling the trigger. Nothing happened. It didn't appear to actually be loaded, so after some fumbling and nearly blowing his foot off, he managed to use one of the boxes of shotgun shells he had found to reload it. Cocking it, he turned back to the door and kicked it open, coming practically face to face with the remaining monster in the hallway.

While it started at him, Harry aimed and fired, the recoil causing him to drop the shotgun and fall over. The blast shot harmlessly over the monster's head, but it did cause the monster to come after him. Snarling, Harry grabbed up the shotgun again, cocked it, and managed to clip its shoulder this time. The monster wailed and collapsed at Harry's feet, but before it could get up again Harry slammed the butt of the gun into its head until the radio silenced itself again. Panting heavily, Harry cocked the shotgun once more. There was still the rest of the second floor to check. He saw what looked like another set of stairs that lead back down to the ground floor, but it was completely blocked by twisted, pointed metal that appeared as if it was once part of the banister.

Room 311 was crawling with spiders, but Harry found another box of shotgun shells in it so he didn't consider it a waste of time. He would need all the ammunition he could get if he was going to take on all of the monsters in the motel. The next two rooms were locked but room 314 could open, and there was another monster in there. Bracing himself against a wall, Harry fired in its direction, but it hit a table next to it instead. Cocking it again quickly, he managed to hit the bone monster dead on in its chest with his second shot. It still twitched slightly though, so Harry smashed the butt into its head again until it expired.

He knew he only had one more shell left in the gun, but with twenty-four more shells in his pouch, twelve of which he quickly transferred to his pocket for easier access, Harry quickly headed down the stairs to deal with the ones he had run away from before.


	6. And all these nightmares I once had

He eased the gate open, finger on the trigger, and before any of the bone creatures could turn around he managed to shoot one dead-on in the head. The other two immediately screamed and leapt for him, but he quickly drew the pipe from his pouch and smashed them both to death, managing to get behind the second one as he dealt with the first so he was easily able to switch targets when the time came. He gave the one he shot an extra couple of kicks for good measure, as the radio was still emitting a faint noise. It quieted entirely once he was finished. He quickly reloaded the shotgun and took a look around with his torch.

He proceeded to try to open all the doors in that particular area, whispering Teddy's name next to each of them as he went. No one answered at any of these times, but he couldn't shake the thought that maybe he was trapped behind one of them, unable to get out, and unable to answer. The image of his poor little godson, scared and alone and possibly hurt, threatened to overwhelm him. He knew he had to find him soon.

When he reached the door to room 307 and tried the doorknob, it actually jiggled a little bit, unlike all the other doors he had previously tried where the doorknob wouldn't turn at all and the door itself felt like it was one with the wall. With this one there was a bit of a give to it, making Harry feel sure that it could open, just that it was perhaps locked. Maybe if he found a key, he would be able to open it. The door next to it, room 306, had absolutely nothing inside it aside from more trashed and shattered furniture, though he was grateful for the lack of monsters and made sure to check it thoroughly for any missing children. There weren't any.

Knowing that all the other gates were locked, perhaps permanently, and knowing that the stairs were blocked, Harry checked the map and headed through another set of staff accommodations, where the radio immediately went haywire and he saw that there were two monsters waiting for him. He missed his first shot, which hit the bed behind one of them, but the next one got it in the leg and the third hit the other in the stomach. They both went down and he finished them off with the butt of the shotgun once more. He was getting more and more confident and the recoil wasn't affecting him so much anymore, though his right arm and shoulder still hurt considerably.

There was a grim waiting for him when he went through the other door, but he ran around it and headed for room 209. The radio was buzzing louder than ever before and he quickly shut the door behind him, staying outside. He didn't feel up to taking out four of the bone monsters at once in such a confined space just yet. The grim leapt up and bit him on the arm when he was distracted; he let out a yell and beat it off with the shotgun, putting a bullet in its head. Shaking slightly, he pulled out the dittany again and put a few drops on his arm, watching it heal. He was starting to run low on his second bottle.

The area that lead to the rooms in the 500 range was blocked off by a mountain of bags of rotting trash, broken furniture, and other pieces of garbage. None of it would budge no matter how hard he slammed his shoulder against it. He used his left as his right was still sore from using the shotgun, but soon both were in equal amounts of pain. Eventually an entire human foot fell out of one of the garbage bags, and he jerked away in disgust. He stopped attempting to get through the barrier after that.

He tried the rooms on the opposite side of the motel instead. Room 304 opened easily, and the bed was actually unbroken for once, thought there was a small pool of blood in the middle that was steadily dripping over the sides. There were also two Health Drinks floating in the middle of the pool. Harry left those ones alone.

The next three rooms were jammed but room 300 contained a single bone monster, which Harry took out with the final two shells in his shotgun. He reloaded while looking around the room. There was absolutely nothing else in it. No bed, no other furniture, nothing. There were the remains of a moldy toilet and a chunk of unidentifiable meat surrounded by flies stuffed in the shower. Harry quickly backed out of the room, his nose buried in his jacket.

Room 207 had a rusty bed frame that looked like it had been ripped away from the wall and slammed into the dresser opposite it. There was nothing else inside at first glance but before Harry turned and left he saw another tiny red ampoule, almost unnoticeable from its hiding place under several pieces of wood that were all that remained of the dresser. Harry really had no idea why he kept picking up these strange objects, but he assumed that having more things to carry around with him made him feel more safe, more prepared to face the obvious dangers this town presented to him. He wondered again why Healer Hazle had never mentioned any of these things to him.

With only the one door he had already checked left to clear out, Harry inhaled deeply, cocked his shotgun, kicked open the door, and fired all six shots blindly into the room. Three of the monsters were down and twitching when the other lunged for him, swiping across his chest. Harry beat it off with the shotgun, making sure to stomp on the heads of at least two of the other monsters as he did so, as he fumbled for the pipe in his pouch. Dropping the shotgun entirely, he beat the monster against the wall several times before it slid down limply at his feet. A sharp pain in his back alerted him to the fact that the last monster had gotten to its feet again, and Harry quickly turned and smashed his pipe into its face.

Panting heavily and using even more dittany on his wounds, straining to get to the slash on his back and using up the second bottle entirely, making him start on the third and final one, Harry looked down at the carnage around him. A glint from the light of his torch caught his eye, and he bent down to take a closer look. Jammed under one of the bones of one of the monsters was a key, with a tag labeled "307". His hand jutted out and pried the key from the tangle of pointed bones before he was even fully aware of what he was doing. He stood up and quickly headed out the door, heading for staff accommodations. He leapt over the two bodies he had left there, running outside again and jamming the key into the corresponding lock as quickly as he could.

He opened the door slowly and carefully, pausing as he took in the interior of the room. The bed in front of him was surrounded by dark black bars, and resting on the covers was a grim, fast asleep and seemingly unaffected by the torchlight that was shining practically right in its face. Harry quickly moved the light away, stepping in cautiously. The grim wasn't even setting the radio off, which was curious. It must need to be awake to affect it.

Underneath its paw was…what looked like a sledgehammer. It had a long handle and was close enough to the bars that Harry could probably grab it easily, but he didn't want to wake the dog and have it rip his hand off. He would need both his hands if he was going to get Teddy out of this place.

He moved the torch around and saw several magazines spread about the floor, all of girls in bikinis. Underneath one of them was a small book. Harry bent down and saw that it was a copy of _Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance._ He tried picking it up but it was coated with so much blood that it was stuck to the floor. Shivering slightly, he stood back up and examined the room further.

In the bathroom was a toilet that was soaked almost entirely with blood, and unlike the other toilets this blood was fresh; still scarlet, it dripped down the bowl onto the floor in rivulets. An entire human arm had been shoved into the toilet, the hand jutting out and sticking straight up into the air.

_A hand is raised to the heavens…_Harry crept closer, tiptoeing around the caged grim, shining the light of the torch directly onto the hand itself. Clutched in its grip was another small piece of brass, this one with a blue number _8_ embossed onto it. Harry slowly reached out his hand, reluctant to touch it but knowing he had no other choice. The hand was stiff from rigor mortis, and Harry was forced to break off a couple of its fingers in order to dislodge the brass piece.

He stared at it, pulling out the other one he had collected previously and comparing the two. Apart from the numbers, they were exactly identical. If he collected what was probably the final piece, they might form the combination to the padlock on the gate that lead to the pool area, and he would finally be able to use the Pink Moon Suite key to find…whatever would be waiting for him in there.

It was too much for him to hope that it would be Teddy, but he held onto that faint glimmer that still remained inside him with everything he had.

Exiting the bathroom, Harry crept closer to the cage. Stretching out his hand between the bars, he slowly wrapped his fingers around the handle of the sledgehammer. The grim did not move just yet, so Harry eased it as slowly as he could out of its reach. Heart hammering in his throat, he managed to slip it out from under the thing's paw entirely. Now gripping it with both hands, he turned it slightly so that the actual hammer portion wouldn't hit the bars on its way out. He exhaled as softly as he could as it cleared the bars without making a noise.

The grim slept on. It might've been dead the whole time; Harry couldn't even see if it was breathing.

Unable to stay in the room any longer, Harry staggered out of the room and shut the door behind him, sinking to the ground beside the door. Shoving the sledgehammer away, he took out another box of shotgun shells and the poem he had taken earlier. After reloading shakily, he scanned the poem once more.

_The hunted coughs out its last breath_

_And a hand is raised to the heavens_

_Begging for salvation_

_Wishing only to open the door_

_The hand raised to the heavens must've been the one in the toilet,_ Harry thought desperately, _and the "salvation" part must've meant the angel. So that just means I have to find something that's "hunted"…_

Harry put the poem back into his pouch and took another look at his map, marking where he had already been with the pen and indicating which places could be opened and which couldn't. It appeared as though there was an entire section of the motel he wasn't able to get to, not with everything blocked off the way it was, but it couldn't hurt to recheck just to make sure. He decided to start upstairs first, in order to get the smallest area out of the way.

Fairly certain that he had killed all of the monsters in, at least, all of the accessible areas, Harry had no problem shouting his godson's name repeatedly in the vain hope that he would receive an answer. He kept his shotgun cocked and ready just in case, but no matter how loudly he shouted, there wasn't an answer of any kind. Even the radio was silent. He tried even harder to open each of the jammed doors, struggling to suppress the though that one of the locked doors might be where Teddy was. Maybe he just wasn't able to answer because he'd been gagged or Silenced or Stunned or just plain unconscious or…Harry terminated that trail of thought, refusing to even consider the possibility.

Finding nothing, Harry ran back to the ground floor, searching frantically for anything he might've missed. Finding nothing in any of the rooms or in the staff accommodations, he dove back into the reception area, nearly sobbing in relief at the return to what was almost a sense of normality. The sign of the Deathly Hallows still glowed faintly in one of the walls, and despite the small itch in his scar, Harry was almost happy to see it, as it was the only familiar thing he had seen in this entire town thus far. Leaning heavily against one of the pool tables, he focused on getting his breath back, emerald eyes making contact with the shining, black eyes of the stuffed deer head on the opposite wall.

Jerking up, Harry dashed over to the wall and began examining the stuffed head closely. It was the only thing he'd seen that could be described as "hunted." Sure enough, there was another piece of brass jammed into its mouth. Harry plucked it out and stared at the little blue number _7 _that had been carved into it.

Laughing in elation, Harry ran out of the reception area and went up to the gate leading to the pool. He figured that he had to do the numbers in the order that the poem had suggested, so after double-checking the poem and remembering where he had found each piece, he carefully spun the dials so that the combination read 7-7-8-0. There was a clanging sound as the padlock unlocked; the chains were slipping from the gate and pooling in a pile in front of it. Kicking them away and shoving all three brass pieces back into his pouch, Harry opened the gate with a confidence he found surprising considering what had happened to him so far.

As the gate clanged shut behind him, Harry took in his surroundings. He seemed to have come into a large, open space that he knew from the map housed a pool of some kind. The light of his torch wasn't illuminating much in front of him, so he was forced to step forward in order to see anything. A foul stench permeated the air and Harry buried his nose in the sleeve of his jacket once again in an effort to stave off the smell. His torch finally lit up a large, heart-shaped pool dug into the ground, filled with some sort of viscous green fluid that bubbled and boiled, splashing about in a way that made Harry think wildly of Felix Felicis, though there was no way this was going anywhere near his mouth.

And out of this thick fluid emerged a figure that made Harry halt in his tracks, unable to move.

It was shaped vaguely like a naked man, though sexless; its green-tinged flesh covered in boils, blisters, and old, infected scars, all of which were oozing blood and pus. Its black hair was sticking to its head, its eyes were sewn shut and its mouth was open and drooling as it crawled slowly toward Harry's frozen position. With a bray like a donkey, it swung its arm down and swiped at Harry's leg, its mangled fingernails jutting out from the ends of its hand like claws.

Harry snapped out of it immediately; he raised the shotgun and fired six shells directly into the thing's head. It screamed each time but refused to go down, instead raising its arm to strike Harry again. Harry ran out of the way and tried to reload as fast as he could, dropping some of the shells in his haste. He shot at the thing again; it brayed once more like a wounded animal as it held out its hands. A spray of green and yellow slime emitted from its wounds, hitting Harry in the face. His glasses protected his eyes from the blast but he let out a yell as whatever the sludge was burned his skin. Wiping it off quickly with the sleeve of his jacket, he reloaded the shotgun and dodged another burst of slime. His glasses were still covered in the foul-smelling liquid, but he was still able to make out the shape of the thing and quickly fired several more shots in its general direction.

A scream louder than any of the others suddenly rang out, and Harry took the opportunity to swiftly clean his glasses. Putting them back on, he saw that he had apparently shot off one of the thing's legs.

The monster was now crying like a human infant as it fell back into the pool, the boiling liquid dissolving the body almost instantaneously.

Harry nearly cried with relief. He took out the last of the dittany, dripped it onto his hands, and rubbed it over his face, ignoring the searing pain it caused as it healed the burn marks on his face. Glancing down at the injury on his leg, he pulled out one of the many, many Health Drinks he had picked up along the way. He stared at it for some time before deciding against it, placing it back in his pouch once more and taking out the key to the Pink Moon Suite.

Glancing along the edge of the area and checking the map for reference, it didn't take him too long to find the room the key was meant for. He rushed up to the door immediately, jumping over the severed leg as he did so, and shoved the key into the lock, turning it quickly and pulling the door open. He stepped in and slammed the door behind him.

The first thing that was immediately noticeable was the overpowering stench of urine. Grimacing and clutching his sleeve over his nose and mouth, Harry squinted inside. The room looked roughly the same as the rest, though the furniture was completely intact for once, and thankfully there were no monsters in this one. The only difference was that the bed was made up of an uncovered mattress, with a massive stain in the middle.

Harry immediately wondered if Teddy had been here. He flashed the torch around the room, placing it on the dresser so he could check the drawers to see if there was any sign that he was right. All that he came up with was a couple more Health Drinks in the bottom drawer. There was nothing else of interest in the room.

Sighing, Harry returned his attention to the mattress. If Teddy _had_ been here, he probably wouldn't have been asleep long enough to wet the bed again. He'd been having that problem for a while now, and was starting to become extremely upset by it, saying that he was a big boy now and that this shouldn't be happening. Harry remembered him crying but trying to hide it, huddled at the end of the bed as far away from the mess he'd created as he could. Harry had easily cleaned the mattress and sheets with magic and sat down next to him, but Teddy had turned away.

"You know," Harry had begun softly, "when I lived with my aunt and uncle, they always used to shout at me whenever I wet the bed. They threatened to not let me have any water or that they would take my bed away so I'd have to sleep on the floor." He felt Teddy shrink away from him and spoke quickly to reassure him. "But they didn't create nearly the same fuss when my cousin did the exact same thing, because they loved him and they didn't care for me one bit." He smiled nostalgically. "Either way, I remember both of us being embarrassed a lot, but I was the one who learned to expect punishment for things that weren't my fault.

"And I learned later that the Dursleys were wrong," he had gone on, gently putting an arm around his trembling godson. "Little ones shouldn't be punished for things they can't control, especially if it's something they'll grow out of soon enough. And even for the ones who don't at first, it still lessens over time for them." He remembered Teddy looking up at him, no longer bothering to hide his tears. "You have nothing to be ashamed of, and I promise that I will never punish you for it. Although," he had added, tapping his chin in mock thoughtfulness, "I might tease you with it when you're older and start bringing friends home. I live to embarrass, after all!"

This had gotten a weak chuckle out of Teddy. Harry had smiled as he ran his fingers through Teddy's light brown hair and stroked his cheek with the back of his hand, wiping away the tears.

"Try to cheer up," he had implored. Teddy had turned around and looked out the window, his hair slowly turning bright blue to match the sky outside.

Harry blinked and found himself sitting on the stained mattress in the middle of the motel room. There was nothing but empty space where his godson should have been sitting beside him. There was no wand to clean up the mess but Harry was past caring. He barely even noticed the stain anymore. He lay down on the mattress, feeling a sudden sense of weariness overtake him. The crash and the ensuing search must've taken more out of him than he thought. He knew that he shouldn't sleep, that he should keep searching, but darkness overtook him before he could finish that thought.


	7. Jealous mind unfolds

He woke up to a kind of repetitive smacking sound. As soon as he opened his eyes, a deep voice said, "That was some impressive work you did out there." Harry sat up, disoriented, his glasses cutting into his face; he hadn't taken them off the previous night. He took them off and rubbed at his eyes, putting them back on and looking in the direction the voice had come from.

A man who looked to be in his twenties was sitting on the dresser against the wall, throwing an orange into the air and catching it in his hand. He was wearing a red T-shirt that was falling apart at the seams and extremely torn-up jeans that looked like they were barely holding together. Through his torn clothing and all over his arms were a myriad of scars, claw and bite marks both. He smirked at Harry, resting the hand that held the orange on his raised knee, pushing his brown bangs out of his dark green eyes.

"So you're Harry Potter," he said at length, smirking at him.

Harry nodded distractedly, still taking in his surroundings. The guy threw the orange up into the air again, then pointed at the mattress.

"You wet the bed often?" he asked, putting on an air of curiosity as he leaned his head on the hand that held the orange.

Harry blinked and looked down at the bed he'd been resting on, some things starting to come back at last. He looked back up at the newcomer.

"Would you believe me if I said it was like that when I got there?"

The man kept smirking at him, and shook his head.

Harry couldn't hold back a small grin in return, shrugging slightly as he said, "Well, I suppose it'll be something new for the reporters to write about, at least."

"Mike Chase," said the man, throwing the orange again.

"Pardon?" asked Harry.

"My name," said the man.

"Right. Sorry, I'm kind of out of it."

"No prob, man." Chase leaned back until his back was resting against the wall, watching as Harry got up and went over him, taking the still-lit torch from the dresser. As his fingers closed around it, everything came back to him in a rush. He swore violently and ran to the window, whipping his head around to stare at Chase, whose smirk had faded slightly.

"How long have I been out, do you know?" Harry said frantically, turning back to the window. It had gotten considerably lighter outside.

Chase raised his hands.

"Relax, man, I saw you enter this area like an hour ago."

"You're sure?" Harry stared outside. "It was pitch black…"

"Whatever you say," said Chase in a placating tone. "Hell, I've only been in this room for like ten minutes, I wanted to make sure none o' those _things_ broke in and slaughtered ya!" He lowered his arms as Harry sank down heavily onto the mattress once more. "'Sides, it looks like you needed the rest. Still do, really."

"I can't, not now," said Harry softly.

"This have to do with this Teddy fella you been screamin' about?" said Chase. "I'm not sure the _entire town_ heard you; if you ain't callin' it out when you're killin' those freaks o' nature, you're yellin' it in your sleep." The smirk came back. "He an old boyfriend?"

"He's my godson," Harry explained, ignoring the last part of the comment. "There was a car accident outside of town and we got separated; I've been trying to find him. I think I saw him once but he ran into the fog, but I know he's in this town somewhere." Harry put his hand out, mimicking Teddy's height. "He's about six, about this high, have you seen him?"

But Chase was already shaking his head.

"Can't say I've seen any kids 'round here." He threw the orange yet again. "I'll try and keep an eye out, though. What color's his hair?"

"He's…a Metamorphmagus," said Harry.

"No shit," Chase whistled. "And I thought that was just a rumor." He chuckled softly. "A Metamorphmagus…What I wouldn't give." He met Harry's eyes again. "And I thought your treatment of people who're obviously werewolves was also a rumor." His grin widened. "You really don't give a shit, do ya?"

Harry shrugged.

"Honestly, I'm more freaked out about you apparently watching me while I slept."

"Hey, I was just playing guard dog," said Chase, holding up his arms jokingly.

"I know," said Harry, glancing behind him out the window again. "To be honest, I wish you'd have woken me. I couldn't care less about my own well-being right now. All I'm concerned about is finding Teddy and getting out of this place."

"Now you cut that out," said Chase reprovingly, his face suddenly turning serious as he pointed at Harry with the hand that still held the orange. "If you don't keep yourself healthy, how're you gonna save the kid?" When Harry didn't answer, Chase shook his head. "Just keep that in mind, okay?"

"Mm," said Harry distractedly, still staring out the window as though he hoped to spot a glimpse of his godson through the fog at any moment.

Chase sighed, then forced a grin back on his face.

"Hey," he said to get Harry's attention. "I'll keep an eye out for the kid," he promised, throwing the orange at Harry, who caught it easily. Chase slipped off the dresser and headed for the door. Putting his hand on the doorknob, he turned back to Harry. "I'd recommend the Lake Side Amusement Park," he said. "Kids love that old place."

"Right, thanks," said Harry. With one final smirk in his direction, Chase went out the door, shutting it behind him. Harry took a few extra seconds to stare out of the window, just to make sure that Teddy wasn't about to run by, then checked to make sure he had everything. Slipping the orange into the pouch, he attached the torch to the pocket of his jacket once more. Glancing down at the wound in his leg, Chase's words flew through his head and he wondered if he should take one of the Health Drinks he had accumulated. He decided to save them for when he had absolutely no other choice, as he still didn't know what was in them; he knew that he had to be exceptionally cautious if he wanted to avoid drinking one.

Stepping outside the Pink Moon Suite, Harry glanced around and bit back a gasp at how much things had changed. There were no longer blood splatters all over the ground and walls, nothing was covered in an abundance of rust, and the entire upper floor area looked intact. The pool was filled with clear, clean-looking water and there was no sign of a body in it whatsoever. Looking over to where the…thing's severed leg had been, Harry was startled to see a fuzzy, bright blue slipper lying on the floor. It was small enough to be a child's slipper and indeed looked like one of Teddy's from back home; he was fairly positive that he didn't bring them on the trip as Teddy had insisted that he didn't need them. He picked it up and put it in his pouch in any case.

Wanting to make sure that Teddy was truly not anywhere in the motel, Harry tried every door he could find, but the only one that opened was Room 201. Peeking through, Harry reflected that this was actually a pretty nice motel, as long as the furniture wasn't smashed and there wasn't any blood anywhere. The bathroom door was slightly ajar and Harry pushed it the rest of the way open, jerking back when he saw a corpse in the shower whose head must have been smashed into the wall over and over, judging by the splatter on the walls and toilet and…the distinct lack of a face. At first glance it looked like the corpse of one of the bone monsters, but it also appeared to be wearing trousers where the rest of them hadn't been wearing anything. There were several other wounds that had been inflicted as well, many of which looked uncomfortably like bite marks. Harry backed out of the room quickly and shut the door to 201 behind him.

Exiting the pool area, all of the gates were locked, and even the reception room wouldn't open anymore. Jogging up the stairs, Harry was startled to see several other corpses of the bone monsters strewn about, and wondered if these were the ones he had killed or if Chase had gotten a few of them as well. Absolutely none of the doors would open on that floor, so Harry went down the other set of stairs and tried the staff accommodation room, which this time was also locked. There was a set of gates next to the stairs, and Harry went through them to find himself outside the motel at long last. Ducking back in to make sure he couldn't go anywhere else, and calling out Teddy's name a few more times for good measure, Harry went out again and pulled out the town map to make sure he knew where he was about to go, tucking the map of Riverside Motel back into his mokeskin pouch as he had a feeling he wouldn't be needing it anymore.

The town was brighter than it had been when he'd first entered it, but the fog made it impossible to see more than eight feet in front of him. The radio was completely silent, though, and he checked to make sure it was still turned on. Maybe the monsters only came out when it was dark, he reflected as he jogged down Riverside Drive. He tried peering through the windows of a building labeled Blue Catfish Diner to see if he could catch a glimpse of anyone, but it was dark and completely boarded up. He called out Teddy's name just in case, but of course he didn't answer.

The radio suddenly went off and Harry turned to see a grim appear from the fog, running toward Harry and snarling madly. Harry quickly pulled the sledgehammer out of his mokeskin pouch and swung it as hard as he could, and it hit the grim right in the side, making it crash to the ground, twitching violently. Harry swiftly stomped on it until the noise from the radio ceased before quickly moving on again.

Running past a reservoir, Harry came across another dead end, and quickly backtracked and headed down Craig Street, glancing at the buildings on either side of the street to see if any of them were open. As he turned onto Weaver Street, he had to dodge an attack from one of the bat-like winged monsters that he'd almost forgot existed, completely missing the radio going off, and ran as fast as he could, nearly tripping on a couple of boxes of handgun ammunition near the side of the street. Pocketing them on the off-chance that he might get another gun, he sprinted as fast as he could past what looked like an in that was being guarded by a couple of the bone monsters and a grim and started running down Sandford Street. The static from the radio blared in his ears as he dodged monsters left and right, the fog seeming to grow thicker and thicker as he ran.

At long last, he saw the entrance to Lakeside Amusement Park being advertised in large, almost friendly letters over the gates. The floor was made up of white and red octagonal tiles with blue diamond-shaped ones filling in the spaces between them. Harry rushed through the gates and doubled over, hands on his knees, gasping for breath and massaging the stitch in his side. The radio static had lessened but by no means gone away. That meant either that the monsters he had run away from were still chasing him, or there were more in this new area. He wasn't a fan of either, and the fog was doing nothing to help his situation. He only hoped that they would let him get his breath back, at least.

His throat was parched, and he reached for his wand to cast a quick _aguamenti_ into his mouth, only to find his pocket empty except for his torch. He swore loudly.


	8. She can't hear your voice

Harry had almost caught his breath at last when he glimpsed the body out of the corner of his eye. It was slumped against the side of the entrance building not ten feet away, but the fog was still so thick even here that Harry hadn't noticed it at first. He adjusted is torch in his jacket and stepped forward for a closer look, then jerked back so quickly that he almost fell over.

The body had two heads.

The one on Harry's right had its eyes closed, but the one on the left's eyes were wide open and staring, or as close as completely white eyes with no irises or pupils could get to staring. A mocking, laughing smile was stitched onto it. The other head was missing a large chunk from the side of it that was oozing a disturbing amount of blood. It was impossible to tell the hair color of either, they were so matted with blood.

The arm on the left side and the leg on the right side were bent at unnatural angles, and like the other creature that had the bones sticking out of its flesh, it was humanoid in shape for the most part, though naked and sexless.

It also had a handgun in the hand on the right.

Cautiously, Harry stepped forward. The radio had slowly faded to silence while he was getting his breath back, and it wasn't making any noise now. This new…body…didn't appear to be breathing, but Harry put a hand into his mokeskin pouch and got a good grip on the handle of the sledgehammer just in case. Slowly, carefully, he reached his arm out closer and closer to the gun…and snatched it from the other thing's hand as quickly as he could once he was in range.

Keeping one eye on the body, Harry examined the handgun, turning it over and over in his hands. He had no idea what kind of gun it was, but he knew enough to check whether or not it was loaded: It was. And it matched the type of ammunition that he had picked up earlier. He weighted the gun in his hands and aimed it at the wall over the body. It was heavy, but certainly lighter than either the shotgun or the sledgehammer, and he had a feeling that the recoil would be significantly less than the shotgun's.

That monster that had come out of the pool was tougher than anything else Harry had encountered thus far, and if he hadn't had the shotgun, he didn't know if he would've made it out alive or not. He had a strong suspicion that he would be facing others like that one before he made it through this, hopefully with Teddy in tow; therefore, it seemed like a good idea to save the shotgun for when he really needed it, especially since he realized that he was completely out of ammunition for it. The handgun would be more than sufficient for now.

Taking one last look at the body, Harry turned away and started to go into the amusement park proper. He immediately got the feeling that someone was watching him and he sensed movement coming from behind him. He glanced over his shoulder but the body was still where it was before. He faced forward again and kept walking but the sense that he was being followed only grew stronger. He turned around fully as the radio suddenly started emitting static once again, seeing what he thought at been a two-headed corpse stagger to its feet.

The left head lolled from side to side on a broken neck, but the right head was wide awake and snarling as it lunged at Harry. Harry immediately raised the gun and fired, but the shot missed and the thing kept creeping closer. The second shot made contact but barely slowed it down, and it swung the arm on the right in a downward arc, slicing Harry across the chest with its long, claw-like nails. Harry shouted in pain and emptied the clip into the thing's chest, and slammed his foot down on both heads until they were both completely demolished; it was the only way he would feel comfortable turning his back on it again.

The radio fell silent after he had finished, that was something at least. He quickly reloaded and pulled out one of the many bottles labeled Health Drink. He was completely out of dittany, but he had no idea if this liquid would actually heal his wounds. All he knew was that he kept picking them up and he didn't know why, and that he was completely out of essence of dittany at this point, making his options severely limited. Throwing caution to the wind, Harry uncapped the bottle and downed the contents in one.

It tasted extremely foul, but he immediately felt the older wound on his leg heal completely and the newer ones on his chest close up and stop bleeding even if they didn't entirely disappear. The pain was still marginally there but it was more of a discomfort than anything else. Somehow his thirst had been quenched as well and he felt slightly more energized, though he was still hungry. He wished he had something to eat if only to drown out the horrible taste of the health drink. _Why_ did he never bring any kind of food with him when he got mixed up in these types of situations?!

Scraping the top of his tongue with his teeth, as if that would help, Harry got to his feet and walked further into the fog. He didn't take even twenty steps when the radio went off again and another two-headed thing came limping through the fog. Putting the gun into the other pocket of his jacket, Harry pulled out the sledgehammer and swung it as hard as he could at the head that appeared to be alive. Once it went down, he smashed both heads to oblivion just to make sure, though at the same time he marveled that there was more than one of all these creatures that all looked exactly the same. He hoped that he wasn't going to run into another pool any time soon…

There was a grim waiting to jump out at him once he started moving again, and this time he was too slow to swing the heavy sledgehammer and it bit his leg. His second swing hit home and the dog went down, but the radio static didn't soften in the least. Harry looked up from the grim's corpse to see another two-header shambling towards him, this one holding a knife in its good hand. Harry dodged his swipe and bashed it with the hammer as hard as he could. It went down, struggling to get up before Harry destroyed the two hears completely, causing the static to die down at last, for the moment at least.

A few paces away stood a large sign with a map of the amusement park pasted onto it. Harry allowed himself a few minutes to memorize it; thankfully it seemed rather small, as far as American amusement parks went anyway. Barely able to make out the fake castle behind the map, Harry figured he might as well start there as it was closest. Besides, if Teddy was here, the castle might've reminded him of Hogwarts.

The exterior might've, anyway, as the interior wasn't much like it at all. Most of it was taken up by a hallway with statues and the like on either side, separated by large red ropes to try and keep the children away. So of course children were always climbing under them, and Harry instantly did the same to check if Teddy was hiding amongst any of them. The radio was mercifully silent so Harry had no problem calling out Teddy's name, praying for some kind of answer this time.

He looked at the first exhibit and shuddered. Of _course_ there'd be a creepy clown statue in an amusement park. He poked it gingerly and thankfully it didn't react. At least this one looked like it was made of plastic, and in any case it was only holding a couple of balloon animals that had long since been deflated. The outfit and fuzzy afro looked like it might've been colorful once but the dust was so thick it was impossible to tell. He didn't know why someone saw fit to carve all the clown's teeth into points, though. There was a small sign of the Deathly Hallows carved into the wall behind it, and Harry's scar twinged slightly again, startling him, but nothing else happened.

Opposite the clown was an almost fully-grown stuffed Acromantula. Or it might've once been an Acromantula; it also might've just been a completely manufactured model of one. Harry thought the latter more likely, as Acromantula were getting rarer and rarer nowadays, or else this was from before they started making reserves. If that was the case, keeping this one might've been considered in poor taste. Either way, Harry wasn't about to investigate if it was real or not. He was starting to lose faith that Teddy was in here; the boy may not have exactly been arachnophobic but no one apart from Hagrid and Charlie liked spiders that big.

Next to the Acromantula, there was a small statue of about seven children in Native American garb dancing around in a circle. It looked especially dusty compared to the other exhibits for some reason. They were all holding hands and smiling, and not one of them looked like Teddy usually chose to; he wouldn't have been able to slip in anyway, as the statues were connected to each other.

Across from the statues of the children were a couple of taxidermy animals that legitimately freaked Harry out; there wasn't a grim amongst them but there was a large, snarling wolf that was so lifelike that Harry took a step back when he saw it. Lying at its feet was a small jack rabbit that looked like it had been preserved in a state of partial evisceration. Lovely scene to show small children, and right next to the scary clown to boot. Harry tentatively checked inside the wolf's mouth but, apart from a bit of rabbit fur that had obviously been deliberately placed there, it was empty.

Next to the wolf was another taxidermy animal, this one a large snake. It looked eerily like Nagini, and Harry had to nudge it gently several times with the butt of his sledgehammer before he believed it was really dead. This town seemed to really like the idea of taxidermy and suddenly he really hoped that the clown wasn't a part of that odd obsession.

The last statue by the exit was that of a rusty suit of armor, the most normal thing he'd seen thus far in the entire exhibit. Tentatively, Harry lifted the helmet, but thankfully there wasn't anything inside. Just in case, however, Harry poked it gingerly with the handle of the sledgehammer; there was no reaction then either. There was a large plaque next to the knight, something that hadn't been present at any of the other items in the castle, and Harry pulled out the torch to get a better look at the inscription:

**Pay me the proof of your pain.**

_The sun rose higher and higher in the sky, and Asha, despairing, began to weep._

**Pay me the fruit of your labors.**

'_Courage, friends, and do not yield!' Altheda cried, wiping the sweat from her brow._

**Pay me the treasure of your past.**

_Taking her wand, Amata drew from her mind all the memories of happy times she had spent with her vanished lover, and dropped them into the rushing waters._

There was another, smaller metal sign that had been bolted to the plaque near the bottom:

This Suit of Armor Stands in Commemoration to

Thomas Rosten, 1941-1987

You Will Always Be Silent Hill's Knight in Shining Armor

Blinking, Harry moved the torch from the plaque to the armor and back again, wondering why most of the inscription was filled with lines from _The Fountain of Fair Fortune_, a tale that he was quite familiar with by now, having read all of the tales to Teddy many times. Now that he thought about it, the armor was rather similar to the suits of armor that were stationed all throughout Hogwarts, albeit with more rust than any of them ever had. Teddy was always fascinated by them whenever Harry told him about Hogwarts, and once he had asked eagerly if any of them had came from the knight in the story.

"There's a very high chance of that," Harry had said encouragingly. "In all my years at Hogwarts I never found it — but," he had gone on as his godson's face had fallen, "I didn't know about the Fountain of Fair Fortune, so I didn't know what to look for. You know all about it so you can try to find it; just make sure you tell me about it if you do, all right?"

Teddy's dark eyes had been big and hopeful as he gazed up at Harry.

"Will I really go to Hogwarts when I'm eleven?" he had asked.

Harry had smiled at him.

"There's no way you won't get your letter," he had promised him, his smile growing wider as Teddy had beamed at him and thrown himself into Harry's arms.

Shaking himself back into the present, Harry stuck the torch back into his pocket and angled it so that he could still see properly. There was a door next to the suit of armor and he exited that, finding himself face to face with the Great Wheel that had been advertized on the map. There was a gate to the left of Harry that lead to the rest of the park, but when he tried it found it to be just as locked as the gates back at the motel.

He thought it rather inconvenient that the only way to get to the Ferris Wheel was to go through the fake castle, but that thought was immediately driven from his head when he heard a sound that for once wasn't coming from his radio or any surrounding creature, though still disturbing nonetheless. It sounded like a woman was crying from inside one of the carriages on the Great Wheel, and the woman sounded oddly like Ginny had from a time not long past.

The Weasleys never truly recovered from Fred's death. George was doing far better than any of them ever expected thanks largely in part to Ron, Lee, and Angelina's constant support and help with the shop, but holidays were still a very sore time for everyone. George maintained that he didn't want to celebrate his birthday anymore because it had never been just his and he hated going through it alone, but Molly had always gone ahead with it anyway. The problem this past time was that, nearly six years on, Molly had forgotten not to bake two cakes. George had exploded, blown up both cakes, and spent a good two hours shouting at his mother while everyone else tried to calm him down. Everyone had been a wreck and Harry hadn't seen or heard Ginny cry so hard since Fred's actual funeral.

There was no way she was actually here. It made no sense for her to be here. But it sounded so much like her that he couldn't help but wonder…

"Hello?" he called up. The woman didn't answer but kept sobbing. "…Ginny?" he called tentatively, but there was still no change.

Harry took a closer look at the Great Wheel itself, trying to figure out how to get up to where the voice was. He needed to see for himself. The building that hosted the controls to the Great Wheel was open, for once, but it looked like he needed a key in order to operate the controls. Trying to climb it wasn't an option; the crying sounded as if it was coming from very high up indeed, and he had no idea of the limits of the Health Drinks, and in any case if he fell to his death they would be useless anyway. He resigned himself to searching for the key instead.

Before he completely turned around, the light from his torch fell on what looked like a letter that had fallen from the door to the controls when he had opened it. He picked it up and smoothed it out, lowering it so he could read it from the light of his torch.

_Hey, Scott—_

_Have you found Henrietta yet? I've searched all over, Lakeside's really not that big, and I can't find her anywhere. I thought she said she'd meet us at the cup ride after she finished at the bathroom and guess what, she wasn't at the cup ride or any of the bathrooms. I even checked the boys' rooms just in case, got looked at weirdly but didn't see her. Nothing at any of the Port-A-Potties, either, in case you were wondering, I was thorough in my search._

_Maybe she thought we'd still be at the Great Wheel? I mean sure, it's way more romantic and less cheesy than the Tunnel of Love but there's only so many times we could go on it during a pee-break. And we know for a FACT it's impossible to get lost in this tiny-ass park…_

_I'm starting to get really worried, Scott. Send me an owl when you get this and tell me whether or not you've found anything._

_Love,_

_Milly_

Harry couldn't help completely on Milly's side; the park really _did_ look miniscule judging by the map, so how could one get lost in it? His Auror-trained instincts were kicking into overdrive again, and he had to concede that Ginny and Neville had a point: He really _couldn't _turn it off once he got started. He placed the letter into his mokeskin pouch and, after scanning the control room one last time, headed back through the castle to explore the rest of the amusement park.


	9. Does the evil excite you?

After killing two more of the two-headed creatures, Harry found the entrance to the Tunnel of Love. A large sign with two swan necks forming the shape of a heart loomed over the building, though whatever else it said was lost in the fog. Harry was willing to bet it was something as lovey-dovey and over-the-top as Madam Puddifoot's, and was pretty certain that Teddy wouldn't have ventured into a place like this. He called through the locked gate just in case but of course there was no answer. He couldn't even get through to the roller coaster and hoped that Teddy wouldn't have been able to either; with all the rides presumably not working he didn't like the thought of the six-year-old attempting to climb onto the rails. Teddy was smarter than that, though. He hoped.

There were two little stands on the other side of the entrance to the Tunnel of Love. The first one was called Flamin' Hot Dogs, and there was another letter that had been placed under the cash register.

_Milly,_

_It's not just you, I've been looking everywhere too. We must've missed each other at the bathrooms, though, I ended up checking the girls' section as well so we can TOTALLY trade stories on weird looks later._

_I know you'd be getting really worried so I started asking random people if they'd seen her, and someone did mention seeing someone that matched her description heading into the Tunnel of Love on her own, which we both know is bullshit but I'm gonna check it out anyway. Plan is really to just wait by the entrance till she gets out, if she's there. (People come in AND out of there, right? And yes, I am aware that that's what she said.)_

_If you want to meet there and help me search, that's fine (No, this is NOT a way to rope you into going into that ride with me, I'm as much of a fan of the idea as you are) but I'm thinking maybe you should stay at the Great Wheel in case she DOES think we'd still be on it somehow._

_By the way, no, I don't think you're just paranoid. We all came here today to celebrate HER, because SHE wanted to go before the procedure. You're absolutely right that it makes no sense for her to ditch us like this. Just hang in there, though, we'll find Henrietta and I PROMISE we'll get through this._

_Kisses,_

_Scott_

It could be completely innocent. It could be that Scott was seeing Henrietta behind Milly's back, causing her to worry unnecessarily about her sister's safety. But somehow that just didn't add up. Harry almost seriously wanted to investigate further but he knew he had to keep moving.

Cinderella Candy was the next little kiosk, and there were more boxes of handgun ammunition sitting next to the cash register. Harry couldn't help but wonder why all of this ammunition was lying around like this, and at a candy shop of all places. He knew that America was all about gun ownership, but selling guns and ammunition at a children's amusement park? That seemed a little much, even from what he had heard. At the same time, with all the monsters wondering about the place and his own lacking of a wand, Harry couldn't help but be grateful for whoever had done this.

Also at the candy stand was a little box full of tiny pieces of candy in a shape that Harry recognized as being Robbie the Rabbit. Harry had gotten a much bigger stuffed animal version of it for Teddy a few months previously, and he remembered that Teddy had wanted to name it Babbity instead of Robbie. Harry had pointed out that Babbity was a girl's name and that Robbie was a boy rabbit, but Teddy didn't care.

"Aunt Ginny and even Victoire wear boys' clothes all the time," he'd protested, pointing at the rabbit's overalls. "And that rabbit's pink anyway, that's the color Aunt Fleur's always trying to get Victoire to wear."

"But someone's already named it Robbie," Harry had argued, though he'd been grinning.

"That name's _boring_,_"_ Teddy had whined. "They're all named Robbie anyway, this one's mine and I wanna name it Babbity Rabbity."

"Your mummy would've been proud of your originality," said Harry softly.

"What's original-ty mean?" asked Teddy, his face lighting up at the mention of his mother.

"It means there's probably only one rabbit like this in the whole wide world with the name Babbity, and that makes it special," Harry had explained. "Just like how there's only one Teddy Lupin, and that makes him special too." He then picked Teddy up and spun him around in the air, smiling as his godson's laughter had filled his ears.

Harry smiled to himself and put the candy back. He then sighed heavily and looked around at the fog again. He would find Teddy. This amusement park was really his only lead, no matter how flimsy it was. He had to be here.

He _had_ to.

Continuing through, Harry came across the tea cup ride, the gates of which were locked and too high to vault over. Near a place that was weirdly named Crystal's Dreamy if Harry was interpreting the writing correctly, there were two other two-headed monsters and a grim that appeared to be guarding the entrance. Harry's sledgehammer took out the grim and one of the two-headers before they could swipe at him, though he had to duck the second one's swipe before he was able to raise the hammer again. Smashing all five heads for good measure, Harry tried the door to the place they were guarding. It swung open easily.

It looked to be a room full of mirrors, mostly of the kind that made people look larger and smaller all shoved together in one tiny room, creating an incredibly eerie effect. There was one other two-header hiding in the corner; Harry lunged at it and ended up smashing through one of the normal mirrors. Spinning around quickly, Harry yelled out as the real monster cut his arm with a knife. Harry managed to subdue it for real and stepped back, panting and glancing around for any more reflections of monsters. Thankfully, there were none and the radio was silent once more in any case.

Harry glanced down at his latest cut. It wasn't that bad so he let it be for the moment. Looking around more carefully, he was saddened to see that there weren't any reflections of small children anywhere around him either. He caught himself staring at his own reflection within a mirror that was attached to the back wall. It had a gilded frame and the shape of it reminded him sharply of the Mirror of Erised. Only this mirror was showing him weary and bloodstained and holding a butcher's knife that was slowly dripping with blood. If this mirror truly was _that_ mirror, he would've seen himself next to his godson and out of harm's way at the very least, that much he knew…

He stared at the reflection again, then looked down at what was in his hands. He was holding a bloody sledgehammer. The reflection was holding a bloody knife.

He looked up in fright to see his reflection's face contort into a horrifying expression of pure fury, eyes flashing red as he raised the knife and smashed the glass in front of him. The real Harry flung up his arms to protect his face as the glass shattered around him. Shaking off the glass and relieved that he'd escaped with only a few small scratches, he raised the sledgehammer and prepared himself for some kind of encounter with what he'd seen in the mirror.

Except there was no mirror any longer, nor was there some darker version of Harry anywhere to be seen. Through the remaining fragments of broken glass, Harry was able to see through a smaller, closet-like room that the mirror had been hiding. Taking his torch out of his pocket, Harry gingerly stepped through.

There was nothing in it apart from a few cobwebs on the ceiling and a large clump of blankets in one corner. Taking a closer look, the pile of blankets seemed to be rising up and down slowly, as if there was a sleeping figure underneath it. It was too big to be Teddy, that much was sure, though Harry put the sledgehammer away and took out the handgun just in case.

"Hello?" he called out tentatively. There was no response. "Hello?" he said a bit louder, with the same results. Slowly, Harry reached out and tapped the figure on the shoulder.

The entire pile of blankets collapsed and several bones rolled out from beneath them.

Shuddering, Harry sank to his knees for a closer look. He could tell that they were human bones, that much was obvious, and they had clearly been picked clean by something. One of the bones that looked like it had been a femur had a piece of metal jammed into it. On closer inspection, Harry saw that it was a key, and he swiftly pried it out of the bone. This one didn't have a label on it, but with any luck this was the key that would operate the controls of the Ferris Wheel.

Heading back out, Harry took one last look around before heading back to the fake castle. Apart from a couple more two-headed monsters that really weren't as hard to fight as Harry first though once he'd gotten used to them and the sledgehammer, and several broken-down video game arcade machines, there was nothing else of interest, so Harry headed back through the castle, ignoring the woman's sobs for the moment, and into the building that housed the controls for the Ferris Wheel. It took a couple of tries for him to figure out the controls, but soon he was able to have the ride turning slowly and have it stop when he wanted it to. He made it go anti-clockwise at first, but the woman's sobs were growing fainter, so he made it go the other way. Stopping at what he thought was a decent place, he exited the building and took a closer look at the ride. There were no figures in any of the cars that he could see, and calling out to see if anyone was there yielded no results. He crept closer to the first available carriage and could see two boxes of handgun ammunition, two boxes of shotgun ammunition, a Health Drink, and an ampoule, which he snatched up immediately. He went back in, started the ride again, and immediately stopped it so he could check the next carriage, the sobbing now louder than ever. There was nothing but a dark stain on the seat, so he quickly moved on to the next one.

As soon as the ride grinded to a halt once more, the crying sound stopped. Harry quickly ran out and took a look at the latest carriage. There was still no one to be found, but there was a small piece of paper trapped under a small, clear bottle on the floor. Picking up the bottle, Harry saw that it was actually a small, thin vial with a stopper in it, curiously labeled "tears" in fancy writing. He picked up the piece of paper next, and turning it over he realized it was a wizarding photograph of two young women and a young man. The women looked like they could be sisters and one had several bite marks and scratches all over her bare arms. Her sister and the man both had their arms around her and they were all smiling brightly and waving at the camera, and every once in a while the woman in the middle ducked so the other two could kiss and she could make faces at them. He wondered if they were Scott and Milly with their arms around Henrietta, and he wondered what had happened. Flipping over the photo again to see if he could find a date, Harry noticed writing on it that he hadn't seen before.

It simply said "Failure."

As soon as he read it, Harry's scar exploded with pain and he shouted out, dropping to his knees as he clutched his forehead, the photo and the vial slipping from his hands. It seemed like it took ages for the pain to subside, and when he looked around again he was dismayed to see that everything was pitch black again, though at least the fog was gone. The entire tiled floor of the park had been replaced with metal grating. He angled his torch and shouted again when he saw that the Ferris Wheel was now rusty and falling apart, with what looked like claw marks ripping straight through the metal in parts, not to mention that the entire ride was leaning to the side at a very precarious angle. Harry quickly backed away and into the castle, startled at how loud his footsteps suddenly were, wary of attracting the attention of more monsters but not trusting the ride to hold together for very much longer.

Back inside, he received another shock at how much things had changed. The statues of the children dancing in a circle were suddenly all frozen in positions of horror, clinging together and trying to hide behind one another up against the wall with their hands thrown over their faces. The Acromantula was missing over half its legs and had fallen over, the snake was sliced into many different pieces, and the wolf was on its side with its insides strewn about beside it. Harry thought they removed the organs when the animals were stuffed, but apparently not in this case. Nothing much had changed about the clown except that its head had moved to face him; it was almost like it was staring directly at him.

Absolutely nothing had changed about the knight, but the sign beside it had changed dramatically. The dedication that had been bolted to the bottom was now hanging by a single bolt, and the space where it had been now showed three small holes of various shapes. One of the passages from the Fountain of Fair Fortune had been scratched out with what looked like a nail, and carved beneath it was a new message:

**Pay me the proof of your life.**

_Taking her wand, Amata slashed_ _it across her wrist and her crimson blood flowed into the river._

Harry shuddered. He suddenly longed for his assured solitude again; he did _not _like the new feeling that he wasn't alone in this place any longer. Someone had clearly messed up the exhibits while he was busy with the Ferris Wheel. Someone was playing some kind of sick game with him.

That someone probably had Teddy, and was trying to stop Harry from getting to him.

Harry pulled out his sledgehammer and walked to the entrance. The clown's head turned to follow him. He swung it with all his might and the clown's head came clean off, shattering against the wall in a thousand tiny porcelain pieces. Harry swung again and brought the rest of it down easily, making sure there was nothing left. His scar twinged again as he looked up at the sign of the Deathly Hallows carved into the wall but he barely paid it any mind this time.

With luck, whoever was doing this would get the message if they came back in there again.


	10. You touched my body once

He didn't take two steps outside before a grim jumped up and bit his arm. He made short work of killing it and quickly turned to butcher the two-header that had tried to creep up behind him while he was distracted. Demolishing both heads, Harry looked around to see that every inch of the tiled floor had been replaced with metal grating, just like the area in front of the Ferris Wheel. While he initially feared that his loud footsteps would attract the attention of the monsters, he hadn't taken into account that he could also hear them coming from a mile away as well; they nearly drowned out the constant radio static.

Normally Harry would try to avoid them, but he was determined to show whoever was screwing around with him that he meant business, and that he _would_ do the same to them if it meant getting Teddy back.

About six or seven monsters later, the radio was suddenly silent for the moment and there were no more deafening footsteps apart from Harry's own. He quickly downed a Health Drink to heal his various wounds and took another look at the Tunnel of Love ride. This time, the pictures of the white swans were drenched in blood, but at least the gate was open, almost as if the bars had been pried apart by something. Harry crept through, seeing that all of the boats were in the shape of gargantuan swans, with seats that could hold two people covered in soft cushions that still shine neon pink through the various blood splatters. There was no water in the surprisingly narrow trench, but there were an alarming amount of the two-headed monsters crawling around the tracks that the boats were pulled along from. They all looked up as soon as Harry walked in, and they all immediately rushed him as one.

Harry soon lost track of how many he had killed, though he could tell that he was making progress; less and less were coming his way. His arms were starting to grow heavy from swinging the sledgehammer around, and his movements were growing slower. Shaking off his exhaustion, he climbed into one of the boats where the monsters were unable to reach him, downed another Health Drink to heal the many scratches and scrapes the monsters had given him with either nails or knives, and switched to the handgun. From his vantage point, he was able to take aim and empty two clips into the heads of the monsters that had continued to swarm him. When the last one had fallen over, Harry hurriedly jumped down and stomped on all of their heads. His shoes were beginning to feel squishy from the wetness of the blood oozing from the monsters' wounds.

The radio was still emitting a low amount of static, so reloading the handgun one more time, Harry headed through the trench and around the boats until he'd found the last one that had fallen over from trying to climb over part of the track. He shot it until it was dead and stomped the heads in for good measure. At last, the radio was silenced completely. Harry nearly sobbed in relief as he sank down to the floor, massaging his weary arms.

He'd barely caught his breath back when he heard it. At first it sounded like sobbing again but he soon realized it was…heavy breathing. Almost panting. And the voice…again, it sounded like Ginny. In fact, it sounded rather like Ginny when she…Harry blushed heavily, pulling himself to his feet. It truly sounded like it was Ginny again, but…Why would she be here, of all places? And why would she…She wouldn't, she loved him, she always said…

…But there had always been a part of Harry that had been worried that she might leave him, that she might see that he wasn't the hero everyone always presented him as, that_ she'd_ always seen him as. But even so…How would she have managed to find him in this place, to set it up like this? Surely she would've noticed that Teddy had gone missing, that Harry was desperate to find him. She loved the boy too, she wouldn't stop to mess with Harry like this if something this serious was going on.

Or maybe it was like the sobbing woman again. Maybe there was no one there. Maybe someone had somehow recorded Ginny while she…sounded like this, and was now using that to mess with him.

Maybe he'd just been imagining all of this.

In any case, Harry had to know for sure. He checked the handgun; it still had five bullets in it, and he was ready to reload if he had to. He slowly crept forward, taking the torch out of where he'd placed it in his jacket pocket so he could have a better look around. There were no more monsters and the radio was completely silent, so he was able to hear the…the noise getting louder and louder…

Harry shook his head to clear it. Ginny could _not_ be here, she just couldn't be.

Turning a corner, his torch lit up a swan-shaped boat that appeared to be rocking back and forth slightly, the panting louder than ever. It sounded like Gi…like the woman was about to…Harry crept forward, his finger on the trigger. If it _was_ Ginny, then whoever she was with would not be able to enjoy himself ever again.

The noises were getting louder. He couldn't take much more of this.

He ran up to the boat and shone his torch directly into it, pointing his gun at the seat.

The boat had stopped moving abruptly, and was empty apart from another small, square-shaped vial with another photograph underneath it, showing the werewolf from before lying in a hospital bed and grinning at the camera, her sister holding her hand next to her and occasionally reaching out to straighten her dirty blonde hair. The back of it had another single word written on it: "Worthless." Harry braced himself for another change of scenery but his scar left him alone this time, which was refreshing. The small vial smelled a bit funny, and when he turned it in his hands he saw that it was labeled "sweat".

_Tears, sweat…Either the last vial is memories, or blood,_ Harry realized, thinking back to the sign by the knight. Taking out the vial of tears, he compared it to the one filled with sweat. They definitely looked like they could fit into a couple of the holes that were underneath the dedication.

Placing both vials and the newest photograph in with everything else in his mokeskin pouch, Harry shone his torch around the Tunnel of Love one last time.

"Teddy?" he yelled, hearing his own voice echo back to him and nothing else. "Ginny?" he tried again on the off-chance she was really there. Silence reigned once his echo faded. Resigned and yet more angry than ever, Harry hopped down from the boat and headed back through the ride, exiting it into the amusement park proper.

There wasn't anything else apart from a couple of monsters that he subdued with the gun easily enough. He was out of bullets at this point so he took the pipe back out, it being easier to handle than the sledgehammer. Once he got Teddy out of this place he was heading right back to Britain, putting him back in Andromeda's care where he knew his godson would be safe, and sleeping for at least a month. Thankfully, like in the motel, Harry appeared to have gotten rid of most if not all of the monsters that he could get to, so he took a closer look around.

The gate to the tea cup ride had a padlock on it similar to the one from the motel, except this one needed a key. Harry searched everywhere, but the door to the mirror house was jammed and no other place he'd tried had anything of value. He looked over at the small arcade area and saw what looked like a key stuck in the pinball machine. Having no patience to play it, Harry took out his pipe and broke the glass, picking up the key gingerly and walking back over to the tea cup ride. The key fit perfectly and Harry was able to go in.

As soon as the gate shut behind him, an agonized scream filled the air. His hands instinctively going for his ears, Harry looked around but couldn't see anything. Once again, the voice sounded like it might've belonged to Ginny; though he'd never heard her scream like that, thankfully, he'd often had nightmares shortly after the war about those he loved being tortured and killed by Voldemort, and he always woke up in a cold sweat and had to use the Floo to contact everyone and make sure they weren't actually dead.

This scream sounded like the Ginny from his nightmares whenever Bellatrix would use the Cruciatus Curse on her.

Harry quickly checked inside all of the tea cups to see if there was anyone writing in pain at the bottom of one of them. There weren't, and three of the four tea cups were completely empty. The fourth one was filled to the brim with blood, and as soon as Harry approached it, the screams stopped. Taking a closer look, Harry saw another small, hexagonal vial bobbing up and down on the surface. Tentatively reaching out, Harry snatched it up and wiped it off on his jacket. The label was illegible but Harry didn't need it to know that the vial was filled with blood.

Having all three vials in his possession, Harry headed back into the castle, ignoring all the horrific changes this time and heading straight for the placard beside the knight. He took out the three vials and, fiddling with them a little, forced them to go through each of the holes in the wood. There was a clicking sound as he inserted the final one, and he looked around to see if this had somehow activated anything. He rubbed his forehead. That at least felt normal.

A screeching noise of metal grinding against metal made him turn. The knight was moving at last.

Blood and pus seeped from the gaps in the armor as it made its slow, clunky way toward Harry, who had never noticed the large, wide sword it had had hidden behind it until now. The sword was lifted and was swung down with surprising speed, giving Harry no time to dodge out of the way; it struck into the shoulder and sank deep into his flesh, driving him to the floor. Bellowing in pain, Harry had to wait until the sword was lifted again for another blow before diving to the side, fumbling with the mokeskin pouch until he found his collection of Health Drinks. It took three of them before he was able to get up again, and the whole time he was inching away from the knight as it attempted to strike over and over again.

Once he got to his feet, Harry took out the sledgehammer, but the knight was far faster with his sword than Harry was with his improvised weapon. He tried the shotgun instead, but after firing all six rounds it was clear that the knight didn't feel a thing. Harry reloaded anyway, hiding behind the fallen Acromantula and watching in a strange sense of amazement as the knight sliced cleanly through what was left of it. The knight then lifted its visor and roared at Harry through a large mouth filled with massive sharp teeth; the mouth was the only feature that Harry could see in the big, fleshy face.

Harry made sure not to hesitate. He raised the shotgun, aimed for the snarling face, and fired.

The knight lurched backwards and howled in pain.

Grinning slightly, Harry started ducking and weaving around the various exhibits in the castle, avoiding the sword at all costs and waiting for the knight to open its visor again. It was tiring work and Harry was beginning to think that he'd missed his one chance when the knight did indeed open its visor again. After Harry shot it in the face he saw that the flesh was looking distinctly bloodier than before, and his confidence began to rise again.

Two more shots to the face later and Harry was just starting to get impatient, and not a little scared. He only had two shotgun shells left in the gun itself, and he was out of handgun ammunition entirely. If he ran out of bullets, how was he going to finish it off? Would he have to attempt to get in close and rip the helmet off of it, risking coming into contact with that sword again? He forced himself to concentrate again as the knight made itself vulnerable, but to Harry's horror he missed and hit the side of the helmet instead. This only seemed to enrage the knight and made it come after Harry faster than ever.

Trembling, Harry ran behind the remains of the stuffed wolf and crouched down, springing back up again when the knight took another downward swing right through the animal. Harry staggered back into the wall as the knight lifted its visor again and screeched as loudly as it could. Harry aimed carefully, wanting to be sure that he got it this time, but before he could fire, the knight swung sideways at him and sliced him across his stomach.

Holding his streaming wound, Harry edged along the wall away from the knight, who looked as though it was as impatient as him to end this. By the time Harry got to what remained of the clown exhibit, the knight had already lifted its visor again.

It didn't even get to roar before Harry blasted it in the face with the shotgun, and it collapsed in a pile of rust and metal. There wasn't even any indication of there being anything under it.

One of the gauntlets rolled until it stopped at Harry's feet. Wordlessly, Harry picked it up and stuffed it into the mokeskin pouch, fumbling as he did so for one of the remaining Health Drinks. His hands closed instead on one of the ampoules but he barely noticed the difference and quickly downed that instead. It tasted almost like mead and his wound and all remaining scrapes completely healed instantaneously.

He walked slowly out of the castle after pocketing the now-useless shotgun and taking out the pipe; he didn't have the energy to lift anything else. The sky was visible again even if everything was gray and foggy. He made his way to the entrance of the amusement park and paused just outside of it. Sucking in as much oxygen as possible, he screamed his godson's name as loud as possible, uncaring of the monsters that came at him anymore.

There weren't any more monsters to swarm him, but there wasn't any answer either.

Harry staggered across the street through the fog until he was standing in front of a large lake. He sat down heavily on a large rock and stared out into what little water he could see. He knew that he desperately needed to find Teddy soon, but this town was so large and he didn't know where else to start and in the meantime that poor little boy was probably hurt somewhere what with all those monsters about and he just prayed that Teddy ran fast enough to get away, he was always so quick whenever they played together that Harry had no doubt he'd be able to outrun all of them…

Harry stared down at his hands. They were grimy with blood that he hadn't been able to fully wipe off on his jacket. He _had_ to find Teddy; he would do anything to keep his little boy safe. If there was someone messing with Harry, if they had Teddy…They would pay.

But how would he find him? He'd only met two people in the whole town and only one of them had given any indication that there were monsters running around. The entire rest of the town was boarded up; was anyone really here? Was Silent Hill just a ghost town that people liked to wander through every once in a while and maybe beat up some abominations for the hell of it? Were people like that into kidnapping? Was Teddy even _in_ Silent Hill anymore?

…Would Harry ever find him?

Was he even still…

Harry put his head in his hands and cried.

"I'm so sorry, Remus," he mumbled into his hands. "I'm so sorry, Tonks. I tried, I…I never should've brought him to America in the first place, I should've known, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry…"

He must be dead. His little boy must be dead by now. He probably passed his body already, mistaking it for something else, or it was behind one of the doors that was impossible to get through…Maybe he was at the bottom of the very lake Harry was staring at…If he'd had his wand, then maybe he could've done something, but now…now there was no hope left….

…He would make them pay…every last one of them…


	11. There's something wrong

A loud blast of music caused Harry to awaken with a start and look around, panicked.

"Easy there, bud," said a voice on his left, and Harry, turning, saw a man with snow-white hair take his hand off the steering wheel in front of him and reaching out to turn the volume down of whatever music he'd been listening to. Harry, shaking his head slightly to clear it, looked down and saw that he'd been strapped into the passenger seat of an old pickup truck.

"Was hoping some really loud guitar riffs could wake you up," the man said cheerfully.

"What…" Harry began.

"Found you on the side of the road by the lake as I was heading back to the hospital," said the man, glancing between Harry and the road. "Obviously I couldn't just leave you there, so…You new in town?"

"Not exactly," said Harry, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes. "My godson and I, we were…There was an accident and I…When I woke up, he wasn't there…" He turned to look at the man beside him. "You haven't seen him, have you?"

"He's the Metamorphmagus, right?" said the man, swerving a little to dodge what looked like a squirrel.

"You've seen him?" said Harry excitedly, the seatbelt jerking against his chest as he sat up and turned more fully.

"No, sorry, kid," said the man gently. "I just recognized who you were and figured it out from there."

"Oh," Harry murmured softly, slumping in his seat.

"Not that I've been exactly _looking,"_ said the man, apparently trying to be reassuring, "but I wasn't looking for you either and I saw you. Definitely didn't see any kids wandering around on their own, I would've remembered something like that."

"Thanks…" said Harry, staring morosely out the window. As the street signs flashed by, he could've sworn that he'd seen some of them before, and they'd all ended in dead ends. Now, the massive chasms in the roads appeared to have been filled, as if there hadn't been any gaps in the road in the first place. He couldn't see any signs of the monsters, though there was every chance that they might be hiding on the fog, just waiting…

"Oh, my name's Palmer, by the way," said the man, stopping at a stop sign and holding out his hand for Harry to shake. He was wearing a large bronze class ring on his index finger with an insignia that Harry couldn't quite make out. "Jeffrey Palmer."

"Harry Potter," Harry replied automatically, shaking his hand and ignoring Palmer's amused expression as the name sparked something in Harry's memory. "You're a…Healer, right? I think I read an article on you recently. It said you help werewolves."

"You read right," said Palmer proudly, accelerating again. "They're usually our number one priority, but of course we treat regular patients with other injuries as well, this town being really well integrated with the Muggle community and all. That's why we're going to the hospital right now, as a matter of fact," he added, glancing at Harry out of the corner of his eye. "You don't look so good, son."

"I'm fine," Harry protested immediately; he couldn't lounge around in a hospital bead while his little boy was out there somewhere. "I need to find my godson, I can't afford to—"

"You'll never find him in your condition," Palmer insisted. "At least let have a look at you. Won't take more than ten minutes, tops."

"…You think Teddy might be there?" said Harry in a last-ditch effort to conjure up some kind of hope.

"You said you were in a car accident?" said Palmer. When Harry nodded, he returned the gesture in understanding. "Happens more often than we'd like in this fog. Maybe your boy did try to find a hospital after. Couldn't hurt to check in any case, right?"

"Mm," said Harry noncommittally, still staring out the window, trying to make out something, anything aside from the music that was still playing, barely audible…

A grim suddenly stepped out of the fog and growled. Harry instinctively fumbled for his mokeskin pouch for some kind of weapon.

"Got a fear of dogs, son?" asked Palmer. Ripping his eyes away from the window, Harry saw Palmer continue to look amused. "Seems a tad odd, you doing so much good for werewolf rights when you're afraid of dogs."

Harry stared at him. Could he…not see the monsters?

"I…took Divination at Hogwarts," he said slowly after a moment. "So sometimes I see death omens jump out at me, and…and that looked like a grim."

"You probably just saw Bev's dog," said Palmer, making a turn. "She's got a black Belgian sheepdog, lots of people say it could be mistaken for a grim in this fog. It's not just you," he added kindly. "Plenty of people get a little messed up if they stare at the fog too long, and you've had an incredibly stressful day from the sound of it so no wonder you're a little out of it."

"Yeah," said Harry, not wanting to push the point with him. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw one of the flying creatures, but when he turned his head to look it was lost in the fog again.

Whatever song Palmer had been listening to ended, and he shut the music off entirely as he pulled into the parking lot of Alchemilla Hospital. When Harry went to take off his seatbelt, Palmer turned to face him.

"I should actually be checking up on my niece right about now," he said apologetically, twisting the ring on his finger a little. "Would you mind waiting inside for me? Or I'm sure at least one of my colleagues is still there; they might be able to take a look at you. Heck, maybe someone's seen your godson!"

"…All right," said Harry, unbuckling and opening the car door.

"Thanks, son," said Palmer, relieved. "I'm sure I'll be back soon." He smiled suddenly. "I'm sure you're sick of people saying this, but it was truly an honor to meet you. I can't wait to tell my niece that I met _the_ Harry Potter!"

"Say hi to her for me," Harry replied automatically, forcing the grin that he always used for situations like this on his face.

"Will do!" said Palmer as Harry shut the door and watched him back out onto the road. Once he was gone, Harry went up to the entrance and opened the door.

What was clearly a waiting room actually looked…normal. The chairs in front of the reception desk were littered with newspapers, magazines, and old books. The lights were dim but the place still looked ready for use if necessary. A bell sat on the front desk and Harry gingerly tapped it, hitting it again with a bit more force when no one came. Anxious, Harry turned the corner and went down the hallway, opening the first door on his left into what looked like an examination room.

His Auror instincts made him duck just in time as a baseball bat whizzed over his head and slammed against the doorway.

"Oi!" he shouted, going for his wand before remembering that it wasn't there. But before he could grab for a different weapon he heard a female voice suddenly cry out.

"Who are you!" the voice demanded, and Harry looked up to see a young woman, possibly a little older than him, with short black hair and bright blue eyes. She was wearing a black turtleneck sweater and tight, navy jeans, both of which had clearly seen better days. She was also barefoot. As Harry made to stand upright, she raised the bat over her shoulder, ready to strike again.

"Answer the question!" she ordered. "Who are you!"

"Harry Potter!" Harry replied, raising his hands in surrender.

The woman burst out laughing.

"Yeah, sure you are!" she mocked him, but her laughter faltered when Harry pushed his fringe aside to show her his scar. She dropped the bat as realization set in. "Oh damn! I'm so sorry! I thought…well…I'm so sorry!" she repeated, backing away and nearly tripping over the bat.

"That's…all right," said Harry slowly. "Erm…Who did you think I was?"

"…You're gonna think I'm crazy," said the woman, hunching her shoulders.

"I somehow doubt that." As if anything could surprise him anymore.

"…I've been seeing…strange things around the town recently," said the woman haltingly. "Things that weren't there a few days ago. And people have been missing…Nothing really makes sense anymore…And the sky keeps going dark…" She shivered.

"You are _not_ the only one," said Harry fervently, stepping further inside the examination room.

"Really?" she asked excitedly. "You've seen stuff like that too?"

"Yeah, and it's only worse because my godson and I were separated. You haven't seen a small boy, 'bout six, hair…some weird, unnatural color or other?"

"…Right…that's right," said the woman, staring at him now. "You're Harry Potter."

"Yes," Harry bit out, a touch impatiently. "Have you seen my godson anywhere?"

"You're godson's Teddy Lupin, the son of a werewolf."

Harry was about to snap out a retort but he held back when he saw that her expression had changed into one of awe rather than disgust. Her gaze drifted away from Harry's face to the lobby behind him. Harry glanced over his shoulder, but the room was bare.

"Men have all the luck," he thought he heard the woman whisper before shaking her head and looking back at him. "Sorry, zoned out for a sec. My name's Alberta, Alberta Owens, and…I'm sorry for swinging a bat at your face?" she finished tentatively, hunching her shoulders a little as she looked up at him almost pleadingly.

"Don't worry about it," Harry waved her apology away. "So…erm…what did you mean when you said men have all the luck?"

Alberta blushed.

"You heard that?" When Harry nodded, she sighed. "Guess I should probably explain it…It's kind of a long story, though."

"I have absolutely no new leads on Teddy," said Harry, shrugging miserably. "Might as well help someone out while I figure what to do next."

Alberta considered this, and eventually nodded.

"Every werewolf knows about the child of one born six years ago, obviously," she said, and suddenly several things clicked together in Harry's head; he mentally thwacked himself for not seeing it sooner. "It gave a lot of us hope. You helped, obviously, but your godson…you have no idea of what he represented to us. The thought that we could do something so…so human, that we could be able to have and raise a child…"

She shook her head again.

"No matter what people like you say or how many times you say it, there's still a part of us that considers ourselves animals, something inhuman. Don't start," she said, holding up her hand as Harry opened his mouth to contradict her. "We appreciate the effort, more than you know, but we can't really change how we perceive ourselves. No matter how hard we try, there will always be that little voice in the back of my head that will always consider me a monster."

She sighed heavily, sitting down on one of the chairs.

"See, Teddy didn't bring us as much hope as we'd expected."

"What do you mean?" asked Harry, frowning.

Alberta laughed humorlessly.

"He brought _male_ werewolves plenty of hope," she said, "hope that they could be fathers. That _they_ could feel human again. The other half of us, not so much." She smiled bitterly. "Oh, we can get pregnant, all right. I've been pregnant six times now. But the moon doesn't stop just because you got knocked up. As soon as that moon rises — as soon as we transform — we miscarry. Every. Single. Time." She bit out the final three words through gritted teeth, slamming her head against the wall behind her with each word. Harry was reminded uncomfortably of Dobby.

It was a while before Alberta spoke again.

"I just want to feel human again, feel like an actual woman one last time. If I could just give birth once, I know I'll feel that. But I've tried everything, been everywhere I could, and nothing's worked. I was supposed to meet Healers Hazle and Palmer here earlier today, but they haven't showed. I don't know how many hours I've spent waiting here."

"I got dropped off by Palmer just now," said Harry, making her look up. "And I saw Hazle out shopping for I think groceries earlier…They didn't seem in any particular hurry to get anywhere, though. Are you sure they're the people you wanted to see?"

"Oh yes," said Alberta emphatically. "Their program is supposed to be the best; even if they haven't found a cure yet they've come the closest out of anyone. Haven't you heard of it? You're supposed to be neck deep in this business."

"I think I may have read about it somewhere," said Harry, trying to remember. "It's a little hazy, though." Something did indeed spark in his memory. "Palmer said something about checking up on a niece or something, but he said he'd be back at the hospital soon."

"That's good. I just hope he and Hazle will be able to help me…"

"…I think they will," said Harry.

Alberta looked up at him.

"Are you just saying that? Or do you really believe it?"

Harry smiled sadly.

"We all have to hold on to hope," he said softly.

Alberta smiled back at him.

"I'm sure you'll find your godson," she said. Perking up slightly, she stood up. "Why don't you go and have a look around the rooms here? There are sometimes a couple of children in long-term care, usually werewolves but…Maybe he thought you'd be here? I mean, you _were_ in a car accident, weren't you?"

"Yeah," said Harry slowly, a fire beginning to light in his chest.

"Then there you have it! He must've come here looking for you, and maybe he met one of the other children and got distracted! A Metamorphmagus like him, they probably peer pressured him into sticking around and making different faces!"

"Yeah!" said Harry, finally feeling hope at last. "I'm going to go look for him, see if you're right."

"Okay," said Alberta, picking up her bat again. "I haven't seen anything weird in the hospital yet so we're all probably safe for now. I'm going to stay here and wait for Palmer."

"All right. See you later, then?"

"Yep!" said Alberta, sitting down again on the chair nearest the door, the bat across her knees. Harry smiled and went back out into the hallway.

At the end of the hallway was a door that lead to some stairs and a couple of restrooms, and another door that seemed to be jammed, not unlike most of the doors in the motel had been. Getting an unsettling feeling, Harry went into the men's room to relieve himself; he didn't know what was in those Health Drinks, but they certainly did fill one's bladder.

The bathroom smelled awful. At first Harry figured it was just the stench of a normal public restroom, but then he saw that one stall had been filled to the ceiling with what looked like many bulging potato sacks. Boards had been nailed across the stall and the sacks were threatening to spill out of the gaps. Harry had no interest in trying to find out what was in them, but he was beginning to suspect more and more that this wasn't exactly a spectacular hospital. Glancing inside the other stalls, he saw yet another sign of the Deathly Hallows etched into the underside of a raised toilet seat. His scar twinged. The sense of anxiety deepened.

The sinks behind him held two Health Drinks in one and, for some reason, two boxes of handgun bullets in another. He pocketed them both, reloading his gun in the process, and did his business as quickly as he could. Exiting the restroom, a light bulb suddenly popped and Harry jumped, startled. He quickly chided himself for feeling frightened at such a small thing considering everything else that had happened thus far. It did make him turn his torch back on, however.

He couldn't go any farther on the first floor and he wasn't about to enter the women's restroom, so Harry headed up the stairs, sighing in relief when he finally saw someone in Healer's robes and barely paying attention to the radio static that started to play.

"Excuse me," he called out to the Healer. "I'm wondering if you seen a young Metamorphmagus wandering about? He's only six and I've been really worried. Oh, and there's a young woman downstairs who's been waiting for some…time…"

He trailed off, staring at the Healer as he turned around.

Now that he thought about it, the lime green robe could barely be made out under all the blood it was covered with. The man's sleeves were pushed up and…and his arms and hands were covered in open wounds so deep Harry could see the muscle and bone. When the Healer had turned around, he had been dragging his legs along and as he crept towards Harry, it appeared as if he had a severe limp. His face was covered with a Muggle surgical mask that was rust brown from blood, and the eyes that were sunken into the grayish skin were filmed over.

"Er…Are you…all right, sir?" said Harry hesitantly as the Healer limped toward him. "Did something attack you? Your arms…"

The Healer was nearly level with him, his arms outstretched. Without warning, he grabbed Harry by the jacket and threw him against the wall with surprising strength. Before Harry could get up the Healer started kicking and punching him, sometimes hacking at him with his nails. Harry fumbled for his gun and shot the Healer in the face. The Healer went down but was still twitching, and the radio was still emitting a faint degree of static. Harry put another bullet in its brain and dashed downstairs; Alberta must've heard that and she needed to know what was going on.

The first floor was still deserted from what he could see, and he dashed back to the examination room, throwing open the door. Alberta wasn't there.


	12. It's not enough to fill my heart

"Alberta?" Harry called out, trying another door in the examination room that lead to an office. Maybe she'd heard the gunshot and ran off. "Alberta?" Harry tried again, grabbing the Health Drink that was sitting on a desk and going through another door that led to behind the reception desk. There was a box of handgun ammunition, as well as a map of the hospital and an old newspaper from years ago, but no sign of Alberta, either behind the desk or beyond it. It was possible that she was elsewhere in the hospital; the map showed that the building had three floors and a basement, so she could conceivably be anywhere. He was about to start the search when the headline on the newspaper caught his eye. It was under a picture of a smiling woman in her late twenties whose hair was tied up in a ponytail and draped over her shoulder, holding up a child of about six who was waving at the camera.

**Giraffe Animagus Causes Outcry!**

**Charlotte Garnier builds new care center for werewolves**

by Lewis Griswold

Controversy has sparked in the town of Ashfield over the creation of a new care center whose sole function is to take care of people living with lycanthropy in the area. For a very small fee of about three sickles a month, victims of this disease can have access to Wolfsbane Potion and a safe place in which to transform. It is funded by a charity driven-organization that was founded by a young woman named Charlotte Garnier, age 28. Garnier, who hails from Judith Gap, Montana, tells a tragic story of how her best friend was taken from her by a werewolf.

"We were living together, and she had to go gather some fluxweed to make a potion for a friend of ours, and…well, I heard screaming. I ran out and saw this…this huge wolf attacking Andrea [Chapman], who…who'd stopped screaming by then. I know I'd lost her, and I knew I was next.

"I ran back inside the house and barricaded every entrance and just fell to the floor and cried for the rest of the night. I heard it trying to get in but the spells held. When the moon set, I was still a mess and I only had one thing on my mind: Revenge. I undid all the spells on my door and went to confront the monster who'd killed Andrea.

"Instead I saw a naked teenage boy who was staring at the blood coating him and was crying just as hard as I was. He looked up at me, looked back down at his hands, and threw up." (ctd. Page 2, column 5)

Harry hurriedly flipped to the corresponding page and read the column beside the picture of a large giraffe surrounded by people.

In an amazing twist of fate, Garnier ended up tending to the boy and providing Wolfsbane Potion for him. The boy, Samuel Pearce, appeared to be utterly distraught by what he had done and had attempted to kill himself many times. While most would approve of this course of action, Garnier prevented each attempt and sought counseling for the boy.

"Unfortunately no wizarding therapist would see a lycanthropic child, especially one who had killed, and of course going to a Muggle one was out of the question, so I ended up counseling him myself. I did the best I could."

When asked if she blamed Pearce for Chapman's death, Garnier vehemently shook her head.

"It was an accident," she insists. "It's as if someone is under the Imperius Curse; they have no control over their actions and should not be blamed for them." When it was pointed out that the likes of Isabel Romasanta, John Bailey, and Fenrir Greyback among others deliberately set themselves up near potential victims, she claims that "they took those actions when they were human. Most werewolves try to hide themselves away or lock themselves up so that they won't hurt anyone. Your examples are only a very loud few and they wouldn't be as such if werewolves as a whole were treated better."

With the recent revelation that werewolves enjoy the company of animals and in particular Animagi, as pointed out by wizarding world savior Harry Potter, Garnier took a surprising direction in her life: She devoted herself to becoming an Animagus, managing to complete her transformation within eighteen months.

"I was very surprised to know what my form was," she admits laughingly. "Like everyone else you want something cool, but are usually stuck with a dog or a cat or something. I never dreamed I'd be a giraffe! I mean, I'm only 5'1"! How does that work?!"

Unfortunately, the one she did all this for didn't live long enough to see it for himself.

"I couldn't watch Sammy all the time," she says regretfully. "No one can keep an eye on someone every second of the day. I thought he was getting better, but…It had been exactly two years since Andrea, and I guess Sammy just couldn't take the guilt anymore. And after he died…I just needed to get away, so I came here."

Pearce died of a self-administered aconite overdose. The Samuel Pearce Care Center for Lycanthropes is named in his honor. It has inspired many to try something similar.

"What Garnier is doing for these people is amazing," commented Healer Jeffrey Palmer from the neighboring town of Silent Hill. He and his colleague Beverly Hazle have recently started setting up their own wing of Alchemilla hospital in the hopes of doing something similar. "It's about time these poor people were treated with the human rights they deserve."

While not everyone in Ashfield agrees with this sentiment just yet, Garnier is clearly in this for the long run.

"I was brought up to believe that every human life is sacred," she explains calmly when a heckler shouted at her for building a place for monsters. "Even those who don't look like humans all the time. I'm not about to abandon any of these people, many of them children, and frankly, I believe those who do are the real monsters."

Harry smiled as he put the paper down. He was glad that he did something to help werewolves in America, even if it was just giving out information. Even if it led to a hospital in as poor condition as this one. He did wish they wouldn't call him a savior, though.

Heading back to the examination room, Harry noticed another door on his left that apparently led to a potion room. He tried the handle, and it jiggled but didn't open. He hoped he could find a key someplace. Going back out into the hallway, he tried to see if Alberta might be in the women's restroom, uncaring of who might catch him, but the room was empty apart from some shotgun shells hidden under a filthy sink. The door leading to the rest of the first floor remained impossible to open.

Steeling himself, Harry realized that he had no choice but to go back to the second floor. He made sure that his handgun was loaded and cautiously made his way up the stairs.

There wasn't anyone else on the second floor, but the body of the…Healer he had shot was still lying there. He…It…The body wasn't moving. Cautiously, Harry bent down. The Healer looked like it had been an Inferius or something similar; there was no way someone with such severe injuries could have still been walking without help. Was the whole hospital like this? Were Palmer and Hazle the only employees who weren't already dead? It would certainly make affording potion ingredients and the like easier to afford if they didn't actually have to pay those who worked for them…But wouldn't that terrify the patients? Especially when obviously decomposing bodies were impossible to keep sanitized for very long…

Harry stepped cautiously over the body and tried the handle to room 201. Thankfully it opened, but all that was inside was a small, child-sized metal bed frame next to an empty wooden crib. Harry peaked inside. Apart from an ampoule hidden in the corner, which Harry cautiously grabbed, there weren't even any blankets or pillows in it. Regardless of how the _Freeman's Owl _portrayed it, Alchemilla hospital didn't look like the sort of place you'd want to stay at and recover from anything.

The doors to rooms 202 and 203 were both jammed, which worried Harry, but room 204 opened easily. There was just a regular hospital bed inside, this one with a mattress and a bedside table with a piece of paper on it. Harry stepped forward in order to get a look at it when a body suddenly crawled out from under the bed. The radio static suddenly spiked and Harry yelled, falling over as another figure in Healer robes reached out and grabbed his leg. He fumbled for his handgun and shot the Healer in the arm, making it let go of him. Scrambling away frantically, he shot it three times in the head before it went down and the radio fell silent again.

Harry panted heavily as he stood up again, stepping over the body and picking up the piece of paper at last. All it said was, "Come back to me." Harry put the piece of paper back down, assuming that it had sentimental value to someone and he didn't want to interfere.

Back in the hallway, the door to the mediwizard's center was jammed, as was the door to the men's room. The women's room was open, with three boxes of handgun bullets in the corner and two Health Drinks perched on a toilet seat. One of the stalls was locked from the inside, and there were wooden boards nailed to the floor and ceiling preventing Harry from trying to see what was beyond it. When he knocked regardless, no one answered. He was about to leave when he heard someone sniffing. He whipped around quickly.

"Hello?" he called out softly. "Is someone there?"

There was no response.

"Alberta?" Nothing. "…Teddy?" Still nothing. Harry sighed and left.

Unlike downstairs, the door leading to the rest of the second floor was able to be opened. There were two more Healers in there, one clearly possessing the figure of a woman and the other holding a scalpel in its hands. Both started creeping toward them, but they were in such a similar state to the first two that Harry didn't hesitate killing them both before they could hurt him, or anyone else. The hospital so far had been empty apart from Alberta but he couldn't chance that the place was completely empty, especially once she had planted the hope within him that Teddy might be here as well.

Reloading his handgun, Harry tried the other door to the mediwizard's center, which was also jammed. The door to the operating room looked like it was just locked, though, and Harry briefly wondered why they needed an operating room in a wizarding hospital, even if it had Muggles come in, before remembering that not every would could be healed with magic. He looked at his gun, his hand brushing over the pocket where his wand would usually be held. Sometimes things just had to be done with your hands, no matter how messy it got.

The door to the intensive care unit was jammed, but room 205 opened onto another room with two more female Healers in it, both as decayed and rotting as the rest. Harry would've just left them alone but he spotted a box of shotgun ammunition on the table behind them, and knew he needed them if he was to survive this place. He shot each Healer once, grabbed the ammunition, and left before they could get up again. The radio fell silent as soon as he shut the door, and he hoped that their hands were so corroded that they wouldn't be able to grip the door handle once they got up again, since it wasn't as though he possessed the ability to cast _colloportus_ anymore.

He exited room 205 and went to open the door to the room beside it when that door started hammering and banging, as if someone was trapped inside and desperate to get out.

"Is anyone there?" Harry called out; the pounding got louder in response but there was no other reaction. "Hang on, back away, I'm going to open the door!" Gun at the ready just in case, Harry crept toward the door to room 206; whoever was behind it did not head his warning as they kept slamming against it. Harry opened the door regardless—thankfully the door actually opened, and jumped in front of the doorway, gun pointing into the room.

There was nothing inside apart from two other beds; no items, no Healers, no _actual_ Healers, and no patients.

No Alberta.

No Teddy.

Harry slumped against the doorway. He'd been hoping, praying, that he would go into one of the rooms and see Teddy curled up on one of the beds, making himself as small as he possibly could like he always did when he was really scared, maybe sniffing and trying to hide it because big boys didn't cry…Each time Harry opened a door, or went anywhere in this town, and didn't see any sign of his little boy, a little of what hope he still had started to fade away more and more.

It was a while before he was able to drag himself out of the doorway again. He tried the door that would apparently lead to the lift, but it was jammed as well. Sighing heavily, Harry headed back down the hallway and up the stairs again, opening the door where the stairs ended on the third floor and nearly walking right into a gurney in the middle of the hallway.

Shutting the door behind him and ignoring the radio static for the moment, Harry looked up and down the dimly lit hallway and turned on his torch to get a better look around. There were gurneys scattered all over the hallway, some of them pushed up against the wall but others smack in the middle or even outright turned over. Each one had a body on it covered with a sheet, and each had a dark red spot that was slowly spreading from the chest.

Harry could smell it. The blood was fresh.

There were also three Healers that were already dead but still moving, and Harry took them out without much trouble and reloaded his gun again. These new monsters were disturbingly easy compared to previous ones, or possibly he'd just gotten better at shooting them. He wanted to conserve bullets but the pipe was nearly broken by this point and the sledgehammer was just so heavy and slowed him down too much. He thought about wrenching the scalpel away from one of the dead Healers but he didn't like the thought of getting that close to the monsters in order to kill them; he wanted a stronger weapon than that, at least.

After they'd all been taken care of, Harry threw caution to the wind and lifted the sheet on one of the gurneys. The body was of a young man in maybe his thirties with close-shaven brown hair and the makings of what could've eventually been a nice mustache. He was shirtless and Harry could see the hole in the left side of his chest. It almost looked as though…as though someone had plunged their fist into his chest and took out his heart. The look on his face was of one contorted in fright. Putting the sheet back over him, Harry checked the next gurney and saw a black man in his forties that had been killed the same way. The one after that made Harry let out a sob; the young boy couldn't have been older than twelve.

Each and every body Harry checked was the same; a man with an incredibly fresh chest wound, a terrified expression, and no sign of their heart anywhere to be found. The only connection Harry could make between them was that they were all male and at least older than ten. As horrible as it made him feel, Harry couldn't help but be relieved that they were at least that old, because it meant that Teddy wasn't one of the victims. He checked every single body just in case, thanking whoever might've been listening each time that it wasn't his godson's body that he was staring at.


	13. Damage done to the flesh

Finally done checking over the last body in the hallway, one of an appallingly thin man in his seventies, Harry went to check out the rooms to see if he could find any survivors whatsoever. The linen room and the door to 301 were jammed, and the door beside 301 had a gurney right in front of it. Harry tried to move it, but no matter how hard he pushed it wouldn't budge. Room 303 turned out to be empty apart from a single bed with a table beside it, and Harry didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

There was a notebook sitting on the bedside table, and Harry made sure to check under the bed this time before picking it up. It looked like a diary. Remembering what happened the last time he picked up a diary that didn't belong to him, he cautiously flipped through it. Thankfully, it looked exactly like a normal diary complete with normal-looking entries in very neat handwriting. There weren't entries every day; rather, whoever wrote this most likely only made an entry whenever anything interesting happened or if they really needed to remember something. He took a closer look at what was in it, feeling only a slight twinge of guilt at this obvious invasion of another person's privacy, but he felt it was vital to understanding what was going on with this place.

_1/04 – Four more families moved into town, each with at least one lycanthrope. Will have to order more mistletoe. Can't believe we're running low already. Probably shouldn't have been so festive last month._

_1/10 – It's one of the children's first transformation coming up soon. Name's Joey Harpe, age 8. Showing surprising resilience and optimism. Suspect he's just putting on a show for the others._

_1/29 – Finally taking down the Christmas decorations. Children seem crushed but it's nearly February for Merlin's sake._

_1/31 – Couple of the children have hidden wreaths and ornaments in their rooms. Have been disciplined. They won't be hiding anything from me anymore._

_2/09 – Had an attempted suicide by one Henrietta Sowell. Told her what we've been working on. She understands we need more time to prepare and that we need to keep it secret. Didn't want to give her false hope if it fails but can't afford to lose her._

_2/14 – Surprisingly smooth going so far. That Joey Harpe really doing quite well indeed. Has fastest recovery I've ever seen, especially for one who's been bitten so recently._

_2/22 – Talked with Joey's parents today. Told them about an experimental program that might lead to a cure. They agreed. Have high hopes. Need time to prepare and also need to somehow keep this from the other children who've been bitten longer. Can't have anyone getting jealous._

_3/10 – Charlotte Garnier came in and explained about her abilities. Wanted to help with the program, free of charge. Truly a gift from God._

_3/15 – Charlotte being a fantastic help, especially among the children. Feel that she'll really come in useful when it comes to those who miss their doses._

_3/18 – Still cannot believe how smoothly everything went. God has truly been kind to us._

_4/06 – Jeff not shutting up about niece again. Apparently it's her birthday soon. Starting to get annoying. If it was his own child it would still be annoying but possibly less so. This is ridiculous._

_4/13 – Meeting with Joey Harpe's family again today. The experiment should be going down tonight. Praying the result will be fruitful._

_4/14 – Must remember to meet with Riley Flannigan soon. Have a new acquisition for his carpet store. Jeff actually pretty quiet for once. Refreshing change but can't help wondering what brought it on._

The entries spanned across several pages, but after that the next few appeared to have been torn out and the rest of the thin journal was completely blank. Harry glanced at what had been written again. It had taken Harry many moments of confusion before he remembered that Americans tended to write months before days whenever they had to give the date. The diary must've been started near the beginning of the year. The hospital seemed to be in much better condition at the time; maybe whatever happened over the subsequent month turned it into the place Harry found himself in now. Really, he suspected that this had taken place more than a year previously but he couldn't be sure: The exact year had never been brought up. Nevertheless, he was relieved to know that that Garnier woman he'd read about earlier had helped out; she at least seemed to know what she was doing.

The handwriting appeared to be a woman's at first glance, and Harry assumed that this was Healer Hazle's diary; there was no name written anywhere but it was clearly someone who worked at the hospital, and as Palmer was mentioned in the diary and the rest of the staff was apparently made up of Inferi there was only one other person he could think of. He hadn't pegged her as a religious woman but to each their own, he supposed. He placed the diary in his mokeskin pouch and went back into the hallway, semi-hoping he'd be able to track down the rest of the pages even though his main priorities were Teddy and Alberta.

The men's room could be opened this time, though it had a female Healer guarding two Health Drinks in it. Harry dispatched her easily and grabbed both of them, going into the woman's restroom for good measure. No one was inside, but something caught his attention immediately: Blood dripping from the ceiling and into one of the toilets, which was slowly starting to overflow.

"…told you, just hold still already…"

Harry jerked his head upward. Was that Alberta's voice? He couldn't tell, but it sounded feminine at least. And…Why was it coming from _above_ him? The map only showed three floors, and the stairs only lead to the third floor…Was she on the roof? Why would she or anyone be on the roof? Harry was hesitant to call out; he had a strong feeling that he shouldn't give away where he was, not now…

He slowly turned around and nearly gagged. In the sink before him, there was a clump of light brown hair shoved in the drain, splattered with blood. Unlike all the other sources of blood Harry had seen thus far in the hospital, this blood was old; how old, Harry couldn't tell. It looked almost as if…No, there wasn't enough blood for someone to have been scalped, but…Someone trying to cut their hair, and accidentally making a mistake? A rather…large mistake? Or maybe…getting attacked? It wouldn't surprise Harry, given what he'd seen of the hospital so far…

He stumbled out of the bathroom quickly, trying not to vomit, and went through the doorway to the rest of the third floor. Four Healers and one of the old bone monsters were waiting for him, and Harry emptied his gun on the Healers before taking out the old sledgehammer for the final enemy. He reloaded again before checking out the other rooms; the storage room had no monsters but some shotgun ammunition and an old magazine that had a giraffe surrounded by small children on the cover. Recognizing what this issue of _Magicians'_ _Monthly Magazine_ must be about, Harry quickly flipped to the corresponding page.

There, right after the first page, was an in-color picture of Charlotte Garnier smiling at the camera with two children in her lap, her long, light brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and draped over her shoulder. The actual article on the following page as well as the rest of the magazine had been worn out with age and moisture that made actually reading it impossible.

Harry stared at the picture. If she'd cut it off from where she'd tied it back, it could possibly be long enough to…He shook his head and forced himself to put the magazine back down. He didn't have time for this. He had people to find.

The storeroom beyond it was locked, so Harry headed back to the hallway, passing by several other gurneys that he somehow hadn't noticed before. Once again, all of the victims were male and all had gaping chest injuries. Harry had a feeling that he should be more cautious as well to make sure he wasn't going to be put on one of those gurneys next, not that he wasn't being overly cautious as it was.

If he died, no one would be able to find Teddy.

Curiously, rooms 305-307 were unable to be opened, but this time the door to the lift was. Thankfully it still seemed to be working, so Harry quickly went inside and hit the button that would take him to the first floor. However, no matter how many times he pressed the button, the lift wouldn't move. He tried the second floor just to make sure it actually worked, and thankfully the lift started to move. Once he reached the second floor, however, the door leading to it still proved to be jammed. There was only one place he hadn't been yet in the hospital, so Harry hit the button that would lead to the basement.

The area was pitch-black, and Harry was glad he'd left his torch on. The hallway looked deserted for the moment, so Harry felt it was safe enough to pause and check his map. It showed the morgue placed directly in front of him. Sighing heavily and resolving to get the worst over with quickly, Harry cautiously reached out a hand and turned the handle. Unfortunately, it wasn't jammed and Harry went in, hastily taking out his gun again as another Healer moved to kill him, followed by two others. The first two were down before one somehow managed to get behind Harry and drive a scalpel into his arm. Yelling, Harry killed the last one before ripping the scalpel out. Blood was pouring freely from his arm and Harry quickly dove for his mokeskin pouch, pulling out a Health Drink and downing it in one. The wound healed completely.

Making sure he still had a couple bullets left in the gun, Harry shone his torch around the morgue. It wasn't what he was expecting; instead of several beds lined up or one of those rooms he'd seen on the telly with the metal silver drawers that were supposed to hold bodies, there were a bunch of strange cages all stacked up against each other and sometimes even on each other. They were all large enough to hold an average-sized dog…or possibly a person who was crouched over. Was this where they kept the werewolves after they'd been given Wolfsbane? It seemed unlikely…

Harry stepped forward for a closer look. Most of the cages had tarps over them, but one had what was clearly a dog skeleton lying in a corner of it. At least, Harry hoped it was only a normal dog…It seemed quite young…Fighting a sudden bout of nausea, Harry looked around the room one more time. There was only one gurney with an actual human body on it, though this one was female, and instead of having her heart taken out of her, there was a crowbar jutting out from her dark-haired head. As Harry stared at it, the weight of the crowbar made it fall out of the woman's head and onto the ground, making a loud clanging sound that startled Harry. Slowly, Harry crept forward and snatched the crowbar from the ground, giving it a few practice swings. It was heavier than the pipe but _much_ lighter than the sledgehammer. Feeling confident that he wouldn't have to waste anymore ammunition for a while, he put the handgun back in his mokeskin pouch and headed out into the hallway again.

His torch lit on a pool of blood on the floor he hadn't seen before. The door to what looked like the boiler room on the end had been blown off its hinges and into the wall opposite it; there were scorch marks around the doorway and the entire area was completely drenched with blood. Harry was positive that it hadn't been there before he'd gone into the morgue; he would've smelled it at the very least. Now, the stench was overpowering…There was a trail of blood leading away from the boiler room and into the storeroom beside the morgue, indicating that something had been dragged there. Harry looked at the door and it _did_ seem slightly ajar…He stepped forward and saw the corner of what looked like a burlap sack being dragged behind it before the door abruptly closed.

Harry shuddered. Not wanting to chance that room just yet, he checked the boiler room behind him. Apart from the fact that the door had been blown off, nothing seemed to be particularly wrong; indeed, the boiler still appeared to be working. The generator room next to it was jammed, which left the door to the storeroom. Crowbar at the ready, Harry opened the door and stepped inside.

In the middle of the storeroom was the same symbol Harry had seen painted in blood on the post office, only this one was much larger, encompassing the entire room. Candles were littered all around it, and a couple of them were still lit. In the center was…a skeleton that was still dressed in hospital robes. The skeleton was alarmingly small…

Suddenly, Harry's scar seared with a burning pain and he could dimly hear a wolf's howl somewhere in the distance as he hunched over, clutching his forehead and trying not to cry out. The pain soon faded, and Harry looked up.

The skeleton was gone, but the floor under the circle was no longer gray as the floors of the hospital had always been. It was skin-colored, as were the walls.

Every surface seemed to pulsate, and sometimes Harry could see what looked like hands trying to push through, or outlines of screaming faces that he thought he could almost hear. Jerking his head around, Harry thought he saw something else undulating under the surface of the wall. Shuddering, Harry backed out of the storeroom, but the walls and floor of the hallway were exactly the same as inside the storeroom. He looked up. The ceiling was like that, too. He couldn't escape.

A growling sound coming from the morgue distracted him momentarily, and he realized he'd forgotten to close the door behind him. Peeking in, he nearly recoiled at what he saw. The cages were all rusty now and the tarps were in bloody tatters, and most of the cages were suddenly filled with grims, bone monsters, Healers, and even a couple of the two-headed creatures from the amusement park. There was even one of the flying creatures that Harry could suddenly see the details of and wished he'd never been able to, and one more…a small figure with one massive, white, pupil-less eye right in the center of their face and a wide mouth that opened up and screamed when the eye seemingly found Harry. Holding its two-fingered hands in front of its face, the eye suddenly lit up; Harry was momentarily blinded and the thing _would not stop screaming…_

Harry staggered away and tried the door to the stairs, which wouldn't open no matter how hard he shoved at it. Desperate to get away from the screaming, he tried the lift instead, praying that it still worked as it was his only hope of getting out of this nightmare. The lift now had bars where the golden-colored doors used to be, and the lift itself when it came down was made of bars and grating and little else as well. But it still functioned, and that was all Harry cared about. He was about to press the button that would take him back up to the third floor, but his hand stopped. Harry stared.

There was a button for a fourth floor.

Hand trembling slightly, Harry pressed the third floor button. Nothing happened. Nothing happened when he hit the second or first floor buttons, either. He tried to control his rising sense of panic, took a shuddering breath, and pressed the button for the fourth floor.

He braced himself against the back of the lift as it shakily rose higher and higher. He could barely see anything beyond the bars; even the light of his torch didn't help. When it finally shuddered to a stop, the doors opened of their own accord, and Harry slowly stepped out.

The walls, floor, and ceiling were the same fleshy color of the walls down in the basement. He hesitantly reached out and touched it with the tips of his fingers, immediately pulling back in disgust; they even felt like human flesh. The floor was difficult to walk on, as if it was slightly soft as well. He wondered if it was the same in the basement and he just hadn't noticed in his panic. He tried going back into the lift but the gates wouldn't budge. The door to the rest of the hallway stood out from the wall as it was a dark red color, the material of which Harry did not want to speculate about. It opened easily.

Harry gripped the crowbar tightly in his hands as he closed the door behind him, but amazingly the hallway was completely deserted. The radio was silent as well, and there weren't even any gurneys with bodies anywhere to be found. He tried the handle to room 407 and it too opened easily. It too was empty apart from a rusty metal bed frame, a surprisingly clean mattress and sheet, and a stained bedside table with another piece of paper on it. The walls, ceiling, and floor were all the same as the one outside. Like before, Harry checked under the bed before approaching the table, and once again nothing was there. He picked up the piece of paper.

_They're coming,_ it said in fairly neat handwriting; he couldn't tell if it belonged to a man or a woman. _They're always coming. They'll find me soon. They're taking me back to that place._

Harry blinked. Was whoever this person was talking about the monsters? The Healers? Or someone else? He put the note back down and checked the room next door. This one had two beds identical to the one in 407, with a table in between them. Another note was on it and Harry checked the beds before picking it up. He was starting to get extremely anxious. Usually he would've come across at least one monster by now, but this floor…There was something off about it, he could tell. He read the newest note.

_No one believes me,_ it said in what Harry could tell was the same handwriting, though it appeared to have been written much more hastily. _They think I'm crazy. I'm not crazy. I know the truth._

_Soon I'll be back in that place. That dark place._

Harry's hands started to shake. What was going on in this place? What was wrong with this town? Had Teddy been sucked into it somehow? How would Harry be able to find him? He put the note down and went into room 405, which was exactly like the previous room in every way, right down to there being no monsters under either bed and the note on the table, which simply read:

_It hurts. It hurts so much._

Harry's breathing became shorter again. This one was scrawled in an incredibly shaky hand, as if the writer was struggling to maintain their grip. He dropped the note and ran out of the room, forcing his way through the next completely unlocked door, which apparently lead to a storage room, he didn't know, he didn't have a map for this place. Apart from a couple bloody boxes shoved against the flesh-colored walls that Harry had no desire to investigate, there was nothing there apart from another door to his left. Almost certain that there would be a monster in this one, if it even opened, Harry raised his crowbar again and slowly opened the door.

He nearly recoiled at the foul stench emanating from the room. Laid out on three tables were several pieces of large surgical equipment next to large chunks of meat, many of which were spurting blood at odd intervals. Much of it looked like they could've come from human torsos. The only other thing that Harry could see was a couple boxes of shotgun shells perched on the corner of one of the tables, and he snatched them up before running out of the room again as fast as he could. He didn't even want to ponder what a wizarding hospital would need with that many Muggle tools, or what was even happening with them.

Going back out into the hallway, the door to the rest of the fourth floor opened as easily as the rest, but there was still one room he hadn't tried yet. He went through it and had to bite back a sob.

There was a large metal table taking up nearly half the room, and near the edge nearest to Harry was a small lump visibly quivering under a dirty sheet. He thought he could hear whimpers coming from it but he wasn't sure.

All he knew was that whatever was under that sheet looked about big enough to be a small child.

"…Teddy?" he murmured softly. "Is that you?"

The lump shook harder and there was an audible sniff.

"It's me," Harry said gently, taking a step closer and watching the lump flinch away. "It's Harry. It's your Uncle Harry, remember me?"

The lump was inching away across the table as Harry slowly came forward.

"I'm going to get you out of here," Harry whispered as kindly as he could. "We're going home, together. They won't be able to hurt you anymore, okay?"

The lump stopped moving. There was another sniff.

"It's okay…It's all right now…" said Harry as his hand got a grip on the sheet. "Everything's going to be…"

He trailed off as he lifted the sheet. There was nothing there. The sheet fell flat upon the table.

Harry grabbed the sheet in both hands and dragged it entirely off the table. It was smooth and clean and completely bare. He examined the sheet. Apart from being heavily stained with what was probably dried blood, there was nothing tucked into any part of it.

Harry screamed in frustration, heedless of the tears coursing down his face. He sank to his knees and balled the sheet up in his hands, sobbing. Eventually he threw the sheet away from him and collapsed, crying, to the floor.


	14. My mind is writing on the wall

He didn't know how long he lay there after the tears finally stopped. Disgust with the flesh-like feeling of the floor was what propelled him to get up again more than anything else. He didn't know what else to do but mechanically continue to go through the hospital, on the off-chance he'd run into Alberta again. He felt like she would at least be a sympathetic ear, and could maybe provide another location where he could search for Teddy. That was his only hope at this rate; he had nothing else. He went out the other door, noted the continued lack of Healers, and tried the one to the men's room. Like all the others, it opened easily.

The walls of the stalls weren't like anything Harry had ever seen; each was made up of some kind of material that was stretched as tight as it could go. Harry slowly approached one and poked at it with an index finger. He gagged and stepped back immediately, running out of the bathroom and back into the hallway. He peeked into the women's room and saw it was the same; he didn't even bother going inside.

Not when the stalls were made of human skin.

Harry ran to the door that, judging by the layout of the previous three floors, would lead to the stairs. Naturally, it was the only door he'd encountered so far on this floor that was completely locked. He would've let out another sob if he wasn't so exhausted. He slowly made his way to room 401 and opened the door, not even bothering to check under the bed this time; he nearly _wanted_ another Healer to attack him.

There was another note on the table beside the bed, this one written much more hastily and on a smaller, more crumpled piece of paper. The words he recognized easily as having been written in blood, but with a finger rather than a quill.

_I don't want to go back but they say I have to go back and they'll make me go back they'll hurt me again_

Harry crumpled the paper and threw it against the wall. He was getting tired of this, but unfortunately for him, room 402 was exactly the same, with a similar bloodstained note:

_I don't want it stop it stop it please I just want it to end please don't hurt me anymore leave me alone_

Remarkable how the notes were starting to reflect Harry's own feelings. Exiting 402, he was about to go into 403 when the light of his torch caught something on the opposite wall. Shining his flashlight more carefully on it, he saw what looked like a string of words running together, all in massive lettering and all in blood that still looked like it was fresh from the way it was dripping down the wall. He walked all the way to the end of the hallway so he could get a better look, then slowly walked back down, reading carefully.

_SODARKSOCOLDITHURTSPLEASEJUSTKILLMEIJUSTWANTTHEPAINTOEND__**JUSTKILLME**_

Harry stared for some time at the writing on the wall. Not for the first time, he regretted ever coming to America. Finally tearing his eyes away, he went into room 403. It was completely and utterly empty, without even a bed anywhere near it. Harry checked the corners and was amazed to see another small ampoule tucked behind the door right next to the hinges. It was a wonder it hadn't been broken. Closing the door behind him, Harry went through the door to the final room on the fourth floor, room 404.

There was another hospital bed in this one, but this time there was someone lying on it. Harry didn't bother to call out; from the stench alone he could tell that the body was dead. It was dressed in the tattered remains of a hospital gown, and Harry could tell that it was female. Nearly every inch of skin had been flayed open and the neck was twisted at an unnatural angle. Her eyes were missing and her lips had been torn off, her ears cut to ribbons. Her torso had been cut open and every single one of her organs was missing. It was hard to tell what had finally killed her in the end. There was one final note on the dresser, this one crisp and clean and written in ink again. Harry picked it up in trepidation.

_Thank you,_ was all it said.

Underneath the note was a key labeled "Potion Room." Harry pocketed the key and set the note back down on the table, paused, and reached out to close the woman's eyelids.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly as he left.

He tried the door to the stairs again for the sake of it, and was surprised to find that the door opened this time. He quickly dashed all the way down until he came out on the first floor, going through the door and into the examination room.

He was alarmed by how much the room had changed. All the furniture had been overturned, rusted, and bloodied in his absence, the walls just the same as the basement. The hands and faces were back, pressing against the surface of the wall as though desperate to brake out. Harry tried not to look at them for too long, instead crossing the room quickly and inserting the key into the lock of the potion room door, opening and crossing into it.

The radio static suddenly started up again, frightening him; it had been so long since he'd heard it. He looked up. A Healer was there waiting for him.

Before it could lift its scalpel, Harry lifted his crowbar and slammed it into the thing's head with all his might. The Healer let loose an inhuman yell but still came toward him, and Harry had to hit it an additional three times before it went down, twitching. He hit it one final time and it stopped moving; the radio went silent as well.

At least until he opened the door to the second half of the first floor. Suddenly there were three Healers all trying to attack him at once; he fought them all off with the crowbar, but they managed to get a couple of hits in before he was able to finish them all off. He downed a Health Drink and kept pressing forward.

The storeroom door was jammed, but the door to the office was open. There wasn't a Healer inside, and Harry checked around the desk to make sure. There was just an old typewriter there with a sheet of paper still inside, a corner of it bloodstained. Harry took his torch out of the pocket of his jeans for a better look at what had been typed onto it.

_I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE. I CAN'T TAKE WHAT WE'RE DOING TO THESE PEOPLE — THESE PEOPLE — THESE CHILDREN — BUT I CAN'T LEAVE. I CAN'T TELL ANYONE WHAT WE'RE DOING. I CAN'T DO ANYTHING TO STOP IT. THEY'LL FIND OUT. THEY'LL FIND OUT ABOUT MY ANITA. I CAN'T LET THEM HURT HER LIKE THEY'RE HURTING EVERYONE ELSE. THERE'S NOTHING I CAN DO TO STOP THEM._

_WHOEVER FINDS THIS, I BEG YOU—STOP THEM SOMEHOW. IT HAS TO BE SOMEONE FROM THE OUTSIDE. STOP THEM FROM KILLING ANYONE ELSE. PLEASE. I BEG YOU. STOP THEM._

Harry let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. So at least one person in this place had ethics. He didn't know why that piece of information made him feel so much better, but it did. He left the paper where it was and pressed on.

There were two more Healers waiting in the kitchen but Harry took them out with ease, getting more and more used to the crowbar. There was another note tucked under one of the pans, this one written by hand on lined paper in a different handwriting which Harry judged to be male.

_It's not just because we're werewolves, I know that much. They're taking away normal people as well, wizards and Muggles alike. I don't even WANT to know what they did to poor Charlotte._

_I think it's because we don't believe in their god. Can't believe I'm saying this, I mean it's the fucking twenty-first century, but there's no other explanation I can see. While it's nice to not be persecuted for what I am for once, the fact that I'm being experimented on like this just because I don't want to join their stupid cult offends me more._

_I wish they'd hurry up and finish it already…No, actually, they should draw it out as much as possible on me. Better me than one of the kids again. I'll try to stay alive as long as possible for their sake. Wish me luck._

Harry gripped the paper so hard it tore slightly. They were conducting experiments…on werewolves? Were they all lured here with the promise of free Wolfsbane and decent care, then suddenly betrayed? And even the children weren't able to escape? This…Harry couldn't even begin to describe the rage he felt, the utter disgust and hatred he felt for the people who lived in this town. Pocketing this note as evidence, should he need it, he went back out and into another office.

There was another typed piece of paper on the desk, but all it said was _**THEY FOUND HER.**_ Harry's stomach clenched. He had a very strong feeling that it was talking about the girl named Anita.

The conference room was absolutely demolished; the large table had been cracked in the middle and had completely collapsed, and all of the chairs were upended with some of them missing legs. There was yet another piece of paper stuck to one of the chairs and Harry hurriedly pried it off from where it had been stuck with blood and smoothed it out.

_It is with great regret that I make this decision, but considering the circumstances I feel we have no choice. Jeff is one of the greatest Healers we have, and we need him for this to work. Most of all we need his niece, Anita Palmer. We're getting closer and closer. She might hold the solution to all of this._

_I hereby authorize the use of the Confundus Charm in tandem with the Imperius Curse on Jeffrey Palmer. If the experiment goes poorly, I preemptively authorize the use of a Memory Charm to completely erase the knowledge of his niece's death as well as her lycanthropy, with occasional top-ups now and again. He'll continue to yammer on about her as if she's still alive and well if all goes according to plan. We just have to keep an eye on him to make sure he never finds out the truth._

_It's for the greater good of humanity. It's God's will that we do the horrible things we do, in order to create a better place for our children._

Harry nearly vomited. Jeff was talking about his niece earlier…If he found out…No, he _should_ know…He said he was coming back, maybe Harry should wait for him…

Harry ran out of the room and into the director's office next, the one place he hadn't checked out yet in the entire hospital. There weren't any notes or pieces of paper in this room, but the broken desk did have a key in it that apparently opened the operation prep room. Harry checked the map and saw that it was one of the doors he hadn't been able to get through on the second floor. He hoped that he'd be able to take the stairs this time; anything to avoid taking another ride in the lift. He sprinted down the hallway, through the potion and examination rooms, and up the stairs, where he nearly sobbed in relief as the door to the second floor opened for him.

An inhuman cry tore through the air from what sounded like the other half of the second floor. Harry jumped and nearly dropped his crowbar; he gripped it even tighter as a woman's mad laughter tore through the air. Crowbar at the ready, Harry opened the door to the other half of the first floor a crack and peeked through, turning off his torch as he did so. A figure was walking backwards until her back was against the wall. In the dim light Harry could see it was Alberta; she was clutching at her stomach, completely drenched in blood that seemed to be dripping from her mouth. Apart from a small cut on her cheek, she appeared to be entirely unharmed.

"He's inside me," Alberta cackled, her eyes wide and a large smile spreading across her face. "His child is inside me…Finally, I can be a woman again…" Her expression turning dazed, she fumbled for the door behind her and went through, nearly tripping over the threshold. Harry heard a lock click behind her.

He waited a few minutes to make sure she wasn't about to come out again, then slowly opened the door, wincing at the squeak the hinges made as he did so. He paused again, but Alberta didn't emerge. He looked down at the key in his hand, but decided to peak around the hallway first. There was a single gurney near the end of the hallway, a hand dangling from it, and Harry saw a large class ring on the index finger, a small bloodstain on it.

His heart stopped. It couldn't be…

He slowly crept forward and examined the sheet. Once again, there was the usual bloodstain on the chest area where the heart would've been, but there was an additional bloodstain between…between the legs…

No…

Harry lifted up the sheet. Palmer's corpse was the only one that was naked, the heart gouged out like all the others, and…

Harry retched, even though he had nothing in him to vomit back up other than Health Drinks, which already tasted like bile. He shook violently, unable to believe what he'd just seen. He looked down at the key in his hand again and stared at the door, flinching back when Alberta's screams pierced the air. He ran to the door to the operating prep room and was nearly blinded by how bright the lights were in the actual operating room through the glass window. His eyes took a few seconds to adjust, and when they did he nearly started retching again.

Alberta was lying back on the operating table, her stomach suddenly massive as if she'd been nine months pregnant this whole time. Her head was thrown back and she was screaming so loud that Harry covered his ears. Her stomach was heaving under her hospital gown, and Harry thanked Merlin that he was only staring at her from the side; her legs were up in stirrups and there was…something…coming out of her…A mass of red and black, frail hands crawling, reaching, pulling itself out of her…

The radio started emitting static again…

Alberta was sobbing and laughing at the same time, reaching between her legs and gathering the…the thing she'd just given birth to in her arms. Harry was reminded unpleasantly of the child under the bench that had been Voldemort, only he actually looked like an infant. This…whatever it was…didn't even have any skin on it…the muscles were just barely clinging to the bones and he didn't understand how its organs were still attached to it…He didn't even understand how it was moving…

It definitely had facial features, though, since it opened its overly large, jet-black eyes and gazed up at its mother.

"Oh," breathed Alberta, a beatific smile on her face as she looked down at her…child. "You're beautiful…so beautiful…And you're all mine!" She hugged it close, and its disturbingly large hand clutched at her gown. "My own child! I'm a mother!" Alberta laughed as her child began clawing at her chest. "Oh, of course!" she said when she noticed what it was doing. "You want milk, don't you? Well here!" She reached up to her neck and pulled down her gown. "That's it…Have as much as you like…Vith…"

The child looked at its mother's breasts, opened its mouth wide, and sank its large yellow fangs into her flesh.

Harry shouted as Alberta screamed again, but she made no move to push it away. Instead she gripped it closer to her, cooing to it and encouraging it. "Drink…Drink as much as you want…Shhh…You're so beautiful…That's it…Drink…" Harry was rooted to the spot. He couldn't look away as the creature kept eating. Soon Alberta could no longer sit up, though she kept a tight hold on the child as it continued on. Seeing that time was running short, Harry snapped himself out of it and ran for the door into the room. It wouldn't open no matter how hard he shoved at it. Even the crowbar did nothing. Snarling, Harry took the crowbar to the window separating the two rooms. The glass broke easily but the monster didn't even pay him any mind; all its focus was on Alberta.

It had reached her heart. It sank its fully formed claws into her chest and ripped it out, gazing at it almost reverently as it slowly stopped beating. Alberta's face was forever frozen into an expression of adoration.

Harry fumbled for his mokeskin pouch, grabbing the shotgun and loading it as quickly as he could, dropping a few shells in his haste. Scrambling to pick them up, he cocked the shotgun just as the creature had sunk its fangs into Alberta's heart. He aimed and fired before the creature could swallow.

A cry unlike any Harry had ever heard pierced the air, nearly deafening him. The monster hopped up from the floor onto the table, nearly knocking Alberta off of it, and roared again at Harry. It had grown suddenly; it was nearly as big as Harry himself now. Every part of it was deformed; one of its feet was backwards, its legs bent the wrong way, its arms too long, its torso still a mass of organs, its face…Harry didn't even want to look at it anymore. He cocked the shotgun again and fired, ignoring the monster's cries as best he could as he fired over and over again.

Once the gun was empty, he immediately started backing away so he could reload again. He knew the creature was actually being injured; it was bleeding profusely from several open wounds and its first attempt to jump through the now-open window was met with failure, but it still kept coming at him nonetheless. Harry fired again and again until the shotgun was empty once more, and tried to circle around the creature. It had only seemed to grow overtime; now it towered over him and appeared to be growing a very thin layer of skin, which was itself…growing fur? The face was elongating as well, and the ears…Alberta had been a werewolf. Whatever Dark ritual she had done to produce this abomination must've taken that into account. Harry knew he had to end it before it ended him, or even just bit him.

He dodged out of the way as the thing took a swipe at him; it tore through his jacket and set four long scratch marks into his arm. Yelling, Harry shoved the shotgun shells into the gun and cocked it, but wasn't able to get away as the creature lunged for him again. It got hold of his jacket, and before Harry was able to get away it sank its fangs into Harry's left shoulder. Harry bellowed in pain and fired his shotgun until it was empty again, desperate to get it away from him.

It worked. The monster began mewling, slumping into the corner of the room, clutching at its wounds. Ignoring the pain in his arm, Harry reloaded and fired a shot right in the monster's face. It fell to the floor, twitching. Harry fired again, and it stopped moving.

The radio fell silent as well. Harry didn't care.

He emptied the gun into the monster's head, then started stomping on its face and beating its chest in with the shotgun. Still not satisfied, he took out the crowbar and continued mashing the monster until it was nothing but a bloody mass on the floor. Only then did he step back, panting, and looked at his shoulder. He pulled out two Health Drinks from his mokeskin pouch and downed them both as quickly as he could. The scratch marks and bite both healed slightly, but could be better. He took out one more. The wounds healed completely. He wondered if he would end up with lycanthropy after this, but knew werewolf wounds never fully healed, so there was a chance he might not. Ah, well. He'd figure it out when the time came.

He looked through the window at Alberta's body. Slowly and carefully, he clambered through the window and gazed down at her. He reached out a hand and closed her eyes. He didn't apologize to the body this time.

Her partially-devoured heart lay on the table next to her. Harry didn't even notice himself placing it inside its pouch.

About to head back out into the prep room, he noticed a note tucked away on a table by the door. He picked it up; it seemed to be a page torn from a textbook on lycanthropy.

_any bite or scratch given by a werewolf will leave lasting scars, whether or not he or she was in a wolf's form at the time of the attack._

_While in animal form, the werewolf is almost indistinguishable in appearance from the true wolf, although the snout may be slightly shorter and the pupils smaller (in both cases more "human") and the tail tufted rather than full and bushy. The real difference is in behavior. Genuine wolves are not very aggressive, and the vast number of folk tales representing them as mindless predators are now believed by wizarding authorities to refer to werewolves, not true wolves. A wolf is unlikely to attack a human except under exceptional circumstances. The werewolf, however, targets humans almost exclusively and poses very little danger to any other creature._

_Werewolves generally reproduce by attacking non-werewolves. The stigma surrounding werewolves has been so extreme for centuries that very few have married and had children. Unfortunately, where werewolves have tried to reproduce with human partners, there is a 100% chance of their lycanthropy being passed to their offspring._

_One curious feature of the condition is that if two werewolves meet_

Harry stared at the sheet of paper. He flipped it over but it was blank on the other side. He looked back at the front. He knew this book. He knew for a _fact_ that it said something along the lines of there not being any sign of lycanthropy passing to the offspring. Teddy wasn't a werewolf; he didn't have his father's disease. He would've remembered it if—

His head exploded in pain.

_Flashes of he and Andromeda attempting to care for a crying, bleeding infant after its first transformation, astonished that one that young could still grow claws, worrying about possible brain damage caused by the pain…trying to get a three-year-old to take Wolfsbane, had to resort to the Here Comes the Quaffle trick, vomited it back up and couldn't have anymore, might have ill effects if he did…Harsh, judgmental looks from other adults whenever Teddy forgot to morph away the scars on his arms, had to ward off police several times…Ginny getting continuously aggravated that he always chose Teddy over her…The nightmare of keeping it from the press as best he could, trying to make fighting for werewolf rights about Remus and not his son, Lavender, Bill, and Connor helping deflect attention…hearing about a program in a small town in America, the greatest place providing legitimate help, staging it as a vacation for godfather and godson…_

Harry reeled back until he hit the operating table. He couldn't breathe. It couldn't be…How could he forget something like that, something so important…Something so central to his godson's life, to _his_ life…

_A hand wearing a large class ring pointing a wand at him…_

Harry clutched his head. Had he been memory charmed? What else was missing from his life? What else could he not remember?

Where was Teddy?

He couldn't breathe. He needed air. He stumbled out of the window and out into the hallway, running down the stairs and back to the first floor. He slammed through the door to the waiting room, his breaths coming shorter and shorter with each step. He reached the entrance and turned the handle. It wouldn't budge.


	15. It was always you that I despised

Harry pounded on the door again and again. It refused to give. He tried using the crowbar on it, then the sledgehammer, but both proved to be ineffective. In desperation, he looked at the map and saw that there was another exit on the other side of the first floor. He dashed through the examination and potion rooms once more, finding the other exit to be locked as well. Shouting in frustration, he scrambled toward the first window he saw, but it was barred; there was no way for him to squeeze out. It was the same in every room he tried…well, every room that actually opened for him.

He checked the map again. There were no other visible exits.

With the exceptionally faint hope that one of the rooms on an upper floor might have an open window, Harry hiked up the stairs. There was no luck for him whatsoever until he got to room 204 again. There wasn't an open window, but where there had been just a small note on the bed side table there was now a small, thin bottle filled with a silvery-white substance that Harry recognized as a memory. It was placed on top of a sheet of paper with the same neat, precise handwriting as what had been in the diary he had found.

_A Metamorphmagus who also possesses lycanthropy. We will never come across such a person as this again, I am sure of it. He is the one. God has truly shown us Her path. I have absolute faith that this time will bear the fruit we've been seeking for so long._

_Jeff – make sure to put this vial with the others in Public Records. Drawer 863, remember that. Key's under one of the trees near the hospital again, sorry about that, but we can't have just anyone getting inside, after all._

_XOXO –_

_Bev_

Harry stared down at the letter. They _did_ have Teddy…And if he went to this Public Records building, he might finally found out where they took him…

Folding up the paper and grabbing the memory, he turned to go out into the hallway again. He was still pondering how to actually escape from the building when he stopped to actually take in his surroundings.

The hospital had returned to normal. The sky outside was gray and foggy once more instead of being pitch-black.

Which meant…maybe the entrance would be able to open again…

Harry sprinted down the stairs, tore down the hallway, and burst through the door to the outside. Inhaling deeply, he nearly sobbed in relief, but realized he didn't have the time as the static began to emit from his radio once more. He could see a grim coming towards him through the fog, and he quickly ran in the opposite direction. There was a small tree in the sidewalk right in front of him and he quickly checked the roots. Nothing was there and there was a flying monster aiming for his face, which he quickly dodged. There was another tree across the street that he could barely make out in the fog and Harry ran for that one next, letting loose a small noise of triumph when he saw a small key partially buried next to it. He grabbed it immediately.

He looked up at the tree itself and nearly had a heart attack when he saw Mad-Eye Moody's electric blue eye sticking out of the tree and staring right at him.

Harry would've gaped at it longer if the grim and the flying monster hadn't chosen to gang up on him at that moment. He pulled out his crowbar and hacked at both of them until they lay twitching at his feet. Finishing them off, and shaking off the bites on his legs and the scratches on his arms, he took another look at the tree.

There was nothing there.

Harry staggered back and ended up pushing open the door to a café directly behind him. He turned and collapsed at one of the Formica-topped tables, breathing heavily. Was he going mad? What was happening with this place? He pulled out the map of the town, realizing that he hadn't turned his torch back on in some time. Flicking it back on and taking another look at the map, he saw that he appeared to be sitting in a place called Café Sun. The Public Records building wasn't too far from here…it was on the same street, in fact…

Harry looked up to try and see out the window, and was suddenly taken aback by how familiar the café looked. In fact, if he moved to sit over by the entrance…yes, this was exactly the same as the small and shabby all-night café where he, Ron, and Hermione had been attacked by Death Eaters. The resemblance was so striking that Harry saw the skirmish play out in front of him again, how he had Stunned Rowle from under the Cloak and how Hermione had used _petrificus totalus_ to take out Dolohov—

The phone behind the counter started ringing.

Harry turned around so fast his neck cracked. It rang several more times before he finally stood up and jogged over to the phone, picking it up cautiously and saying, "Hello?"

"Hello?" Teddy's voice replied.

"Teddy!" cried Harry, blinking back tears of joy. "Oh, it's so good to hear your voice!"

"Uncle Harry?" His voice sounded so small and scared.

"Yeah, it's me," said Harry, feeling happier than he could remember feeling in a long time. "It's me, Ted, I'm coming to get you. Where are you now, do you know?"

"Uncle Harry?" Teddy repeated again.

"Yeah, I'm right here, don't worry, I'm coming—"

"Is anyone there? Uncle Harry? They said you'd be there, where are you? Are you there?"

"…Can you hear me?" said Harry in a louder voice after a moment. "Teddy? Can you hear me?" he practically yelled into the receiver.

"Anyone? Please, I'm scared!"

"Teddy, listen to me!" Harry shouted into the phone. "Tell me if you can hear me!"

"I want my daddy!" sobbed the voice on the other end. Harry's heart stopped. "I want my daddy, please, I want my daddy!"

"…Daddy's not here," Harry said softly, tears clouding his vision. "Daddy's not here, remember, we talked about this, I'm not…" He sniffed, wiping his face. "I'm not your daddy, I'm just…I'm just Uncle Harry, you know that, I…"

"I want my daddy! Why did he leave me?! Why isn't Daddy here?!"

"Oh, Teddy…" Harry breathed, wiping his eyes behind his glasses and regaining focus, staring around the café, his gaze landing on the spot where Hermione Obliviated Dolohov…

Dolohov, who later joined up with Voldemort again. Dolohov, who had gone on to participate in the Battle of Hogwarts, murdering many in his path.

And if the eyewitness accounts Harry, Hermione, and Luna managed to scrounge up after the war had ended were true, that number included Remus Lupin.

Harry had given the order to simply wipe his memory. And not his entire memory either; just their fight in the café and nothing else. Maybe if Hermione had made him like Lockhart, entirely unable to remember his identity, unable to remember Voldemort or the Death Eaters, unable to use Dark magic any longer…

Maybe if they had followed Ron's suggestion instead…If they had killed Dolohov…Before he killed anyone else…

Before he made a young infant fatherless…

"I'm sorry, Teddy," Harry whispered over his godson's cries. "I'm sorry…I'm so sorry…It's all my fault…" He slid down the wall to the floor, the phone slipping from his suddenly limp fingers. "I'm so sorry…"


	16. Missing truth frozen in lies

"Hey…Hey! Come on, wake up already!"

_SLAP!_

Harry's eyes sprang open and he kicked out at whoever was attacking him, hand going for his wand. Feeling nothing in his pocket but the torch, he took that out instead and pointed it at his assailant.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" cried Chase from his sprawled position on the floor, holding up his hands in surrender. "Look, man, you were completely zoned out, I was just tryin' to wake you up, you know?"

"…Yeah," said Harry, breathing heavily as he lowered the torch and put it back in his pocket again, angling it so he could still see in front of him. The light shone on the phone dangling beside him. He picked it up and listened. It was silent on the other end.

"Teddy?" he tried. Nothing.

"Did the kid just call you or something?" asked Chase.

"Yeah…He couldn't hear me, though."

"Really? Weird. Did he say where he was?"

"No, like I said, he couldn't hear me," said Harry morosely, hanging the phone back up again. "And now I have no way to reach him…"

"Try star sixty-nine," said Chase. When Harry looked at him blankly, he sighed. "Right. English guy. Pick up the phone and hit the asterisk, then six, then nine. It'll call whoever just called."

"…Okay," said Harry, picking up the phone again and carrying out Chase's instructions. After twenty rings went by without anyone picking up, Chase sighed again.

"Give it up, man, it's a lost cause," he said, and Harry reluctantly put the phone back down. "Was that your only new lead?" he asked.

"No…" Harry rubbed his forehead. "I think…I think they put a Memory Charm on me…"

"'They?' What, the Healers and stuff?"

"…Teddy's a werewolf," said Harry tremulously. "They made me forget that Teddy's a werewolf."

Chase let out a low whistle.

"I'm legit amazed you managed to keep that quiet," he said. "Wait…Oh you did _not_ bring the kid here because of the program!"

"I think I must have," said Harry, pulling out the vial. "There should be a clue in the Public Records building, I need to get there, there has to be _something…"_ He hurried toward the door.

"I'll come with," said Chase, hot on Harry's heels. "I'm sort of…morbidly curious to find out what I've managed to avoid so far, and…Frankly, dude, you look like you need back-up."

"You're probably right," said Harry as they exited the café and jogging across the street. There was a two-headed monster heading towards them out of the fog but Harry pulled out his crowbar and took it out almost without even thinking about it.

Chase whistled again.

"You, uh…You're really good at taking those guys out, huh?" he said, and Harry could detect some nervousness to his voice.

"I've done what I had to," he said shortly, fumbling with the key and shoving the door open. He let Chase go through first before closing and locking the door behind them, leaving the key in the keyhole in case they needed to escape quickly.

The large, oddly spacious reception area was still dimly lit by flickering oil lamps, showing off a messy reception desk with open books and papers scattered everywhere. There was also a box of handgun ammunition that Chase immediately picked up.

"Got a gun?" he asked Harry, who nodded and caught the box of bullets Chase threw at him. They went around the side and through the wide-open door where loads of filing cabinets stood stacked against each other, some falling over. There were more loose sheets of paper and open folders placed about haphazardly, along with several vials filled with more swirling white memories. On the desk was a Pensieve not unlike the one in Dumbledore's office, though it was smaller and less pristine. Harry walked toward it, vial in hand.

"That's a Pensieve, right?" asked Chase behind him. He seemed to be lurking nervously by the wall. "Have, uh, have you ever used one before?"

"…Many times," Harry replied, trying not to think about it as he unstoppered the vial and poured the contents into the gas-like liquid. He could see an overhead shot of the examination room from Alchemilla Hospital with two very familiar people talking inside it. "Just do as I do and…try not to panic." Ignoring Chase's sudden look of fear, Harry took a deep and plunged himself face-first into the Pensieve.

He landed on the ground and watched as Alberta Owens, sitting on the table, rubbed her scarred arm from where Healer Hazle must have just taken blood. Healer Hazle herself was examining the syringe she was holding and comparing it with a different vial of blood in her other hand. Alberta kept glancing in her direction and opening her mouth as if to speak, but silenced herself each time.

Chase suddenly appeared next to him, eyes darting around rapidly.

"…Now this is just plain weird," he commented, eyes falling on Alberta. "Hey! I know that girl! Little kid-crazy but otherwise basically decent." He caught sight of Hazle next. "Oh. Right. That bitch."

"You know her?" asked Harry as they watched her put some of Alberta's blood on a slide and look at it through a microscope.

"Oh yeah. She tried to get to me, too. Eventually we came to an agreement that got her to leave me alone."

"So you weren't interested in any of it?" asked Harry.

"Oh, I came for the free Wolfsbane at first. Everyone did, I mean, who wouldn't? But their program to try and find a cure…The longer you stay in Silent Hill, the more you come to realize the people who live here aren't quite right. _Insanely_ religious, and not just in the 'I'm better than you' kind of way. More like the 'I will kill you and everyone you love if you don't at least pretend to believe in the same thing as me' kind of way. Wasn't great. And the 'cure' thing sounded too good to be true. I always thought it was shady but I was in the minority."

Harry was about to reply when Alberta finally found her voice.

"I know you're still probably not close to a cure yet, but…do you think you can help me?"

Hazle turned to look at her.

"You want to give natural birth to a child?" she asked.

"More than anything," breathed Alberta, a strange smile on her face and a disturbing glint in her eye.

"…Legend says that if two werewolves meet and mate under a full—"

"I don't want _puppies!"_ Alberta yelled, but immediately looked apologetic. "I'm sorry, I — I just…"

"I know," said Hazle kindly. "I understand. It's natural to want children of your own."

"…Do you have any?" said Alberta hesitantly.

"Oh yes," said Hazle, smiling fondly. "A daughter and two sons, all fully-grown and far away now." She walked over to a small scarlet-covered book she had sitting on the desk. "…There might be a way for you to accelerate the time it takes for a fetus to gestate to be in as little time as a day."

"So I could have a baby _today_ if I wanted?" cried Alberta excitedly.

"Yes, but it would require the use of Dark magic," said Hazle, opening the book to a page she had marked. Harry looked over her shoulder and nearly gagged; the book was filled with illustrations of partially eaten human hearts and...male genitals. There were instructions beneath the illustrations that he had no desire to read about. "The theory is that the more human hearts you consume while invoking this rite, the more life essence you give to your baby." She handed the book to Alberta, who immediately began to read. Now it was Chase's turn to read over someone's shoulder, and he visibly turned away, revolted.

"Oh that is _not_ okay," he said.

"So for the final rite, I have to…" said Alberta, tracing the page with her finger, making Chase gag again.

"I'd make an 'Eat a dick' joke here if I wasn't so disturbed," he said. Harry shook his head in disgust.

"Yes," said Healer Hazle. "It would be the only way for you to get pregnant for this ritual. And the hearts…Well," she added, shrugging slightly, "you can see why most choose not to go through with it."

"I'll do it," said Alberta determinedly. "I said I would and I will."

"…Very well, then," said Healer Hazle. "Now, make sure to take the right hearts like the book instructs."

"Definitely."

"And be sure to save one man for the final rite."

"…Harry Potter just came through here," said Alberta hesitantly, and Harry felt a chill go down his spine. "His child would probably be strong…but I should probably go after someone less high-profile, shouldn't I?"

"I don't see why he would be such a bad choice," said Hazle, smiling gently down at Alberta. "After all, one man's just as good as any other, isn't he?"

"…Oh that's fucked up," said Chase, staring between the two women and Harry, who had started trembling again.

"On the other hand," Hazle continued, "Jeff — Healer Palmer, I should say — should be coming back momentarily if you want to save him for last instead. He is _quite_ the man, if you don't mind me saying. Yes, if you can't get to Potter, I imagine he would do quite nicely."

"Okay…Okay!" said Alberta, standing up and holding the book close to her chest. "Thank you, thank you so much, I don't know how I'll ever repay you!"

"Just give me the full results of the ritual after it's completed," said Hazle, "and we'll be even."

"Done!" cried Alberta, tears of happiness starting to course down her cheeks.

"Splendid! Off you go now!"

"Thank you!" Alberta repeated one last time as she ran out the door. There was a sudden sound of a gunshot and the memory faded; Harry and Chase suddenly found themselves back in the present, staring down at the Pensieve.

"…Well that happened," said Chase, shuddering. "And what was with the gunshot at the end?"

"That was me," said Harry, sitting down on the table and setting the vial down on top of it. "There was a monster and I…Merlin, all those bodies make sense now."

"Bodies?" prompted Chase.

"There were gurneys with dead bodies on them, and all of them looked like their hearts were carved out."

"Ah. Gross. So…Still got your junk?"

"Yeah, she got to Palmer though. Both his heart and…that were missing from his body."

"She have a kid?"

"Yes. It killed her and tried to eat her heart in return."

"Ungrateful brat," Chase commented sarcastically. "Then what?"

"It kept growing and tried to kill me, so I killed it."

"…Should probably keep that from the press," said Chase. "No matter what it turned into, Baby-Killer would _not_ be a great title for you."

"Mm." Harry looked down at the vial again. "The note I got said that this needed to go in the box labeled '863' with the others. I think there should be more memories like that in there; if we find it we might be able to see what happened to Teddy."

"Awesome," said Chase, immediately scanning the labels on some of the filing cabinets. "107, 108…863's probably on the other side, let's go."

"Good idea," said Harry, following Chase back around the reception desk and to the other side of the building, which looked identical to where they'd just been only there wasn't any Pensieve there.

"764, getting closer," commented Chase as he searched. "829, getting there — 863, found it!" He attempted to open it. "…Of course it's locked, why wouldn't it be locked." He tried the drawer next to it. "862 opens, check that one for your godson."

Harry went around him and started fishing through the vials. Most of them were labeled; he found names like Henrietta M. Sowell, Anita Palmer, Alfred F. Griswold, and even Charlotte P. Garnier, but no sign of Teddy's name anywhere. He was almost tempted to examine the memory of Charlotte Garnier but Teddy's was more important to him and he had a strong suspicion he knew what her ultimate fate was in any case.

"He's not here," he told Chase, who was still trying to wrench open drawer 863. "He's got to be in that one."

"Well check around for a key, would you, this is being a real bitch to open." He tried again. "Where's your wand, by the way?"

"Broken," said Harry, looking at the desks around him. "Where's yours?"

"Stolen years ago." He gave the drawer another tug. "I'm gonna keep trying to force it while you look."

"Thanks," said Harry, taking the torch out of his pocket to get a better look around. There were pages and books covering nearly every surface; it didn't look like the place had been properly cleaned in years. Unless someone else had ransacked it before he and Chase turned up…Praying that they hadn't taken anything relevant, Harry started looking under all of the paper around him to see if there were any keys under them. His eyes automatically scanned parts of the reports but as they mainly concerned people he didn't know and legal or words he didn't quite understand he largely ignored them.

Until he saw another note written in what he now knew to be Hazle's handwriting on the floor beside the front desk.

_Jeff – We seriously have to keep an eye on Michael. None of the samples he's provided us have panned out; it's just been one failure after another. Instead of using him to make more experiments possible…could it be that HE'S the one who was chosen by God? Has God rejected our sacrifices because we've been offering Her the wrong victims?_

_We need to bring him in at once, if he can be caught. We have to have faith that one day our works will be fruitful. Michael can give us this chance. I'm sure of it._

_XOXO-_

_Bev_

Harry stared at the letter. If he recalled correctly, Chase's first name was Mike…

"'Sup?" asked someone standing behind him. Harry jumped and turned around to see Chase looking at him with his hands in his pockets. A drawer was open in one of the cabinets behind him but Harry barely noticed.

"…Did you supply…_samples_…to Hazle and Palmer?" Harry asked flat-out, holding up the letter.

Chase shrugged.

"Was either them or me," he said matter-of-factly.

"You…You…"

"Bit people and sent them to Alchemilla, yeah," said Chase nonchalantly. "Think one of them was Palmer's niece, come to think of it. Felt really bad about that one, she was a nice kid. Was aiming for the dad to be honest, guy was a drinker and I think he liked to hit things. And by things I mean the wife and kid."

"But you still bit people," said Harry, stepping backward until he hit the desk behind him. "Children. _Willingly."_

"I did what I had to do to survive," muttered Chase. "You have no idea what my life was like. Unlike your old friend Lupin and unlike your precious godson, I had _no one_. Even before I was bitten. I've been used by people my _whole life_, and the only thing that ever mattered to me was my own survival. Because there's nothing else for me in this _shithole_ of a life."

"So you targeted innocent people? _Children?!"_ Harry spat at him. "You're no better than Greyback." Actually he was reminded far more strongly of Wormtail but Chase probably wouldn't know who that was.

"I am _nothing_ like that freak," snarled Chase. "He thought werewolves were better than humans. I know we're not any better at all. We're all just as bad. And you're no better yourself, are you."

"I don't hurt children," said Harry fiercely. "And I only hurt those who attack the people I'm trying to protect."

"Oh yeah, by beating them to death, sure," said Chase uncaringly.

"I've never done that and would never do that," said Harry, purposefully clenching his own fist so he wouldn't continue to raise it to his mokeskin pouch, where the crowbar was still stored. "I'm not like _you."_

"Of course you are," murmured Chase, a disturbing smile spreading over his face. "I've watched you since you came back into town. And you know, at first I couldn't really believe it. _The_ Harry Potter, the Savior of the Wizarding World, the Champion of Werewolf Rights. Your first instinct would be to send me to prison, wouldn't it. And that's fine, I've been before, there's free food and a bed, and even if I get the death penalty it'll be decades before it's actually carried out while everyone argues about morality bullshit. And you…Well, you'll be right on death row next to me, won't ya?"

"Why the hell would I be in prison with someone like _you?"_ said Harry angrily. "Yes, I've killed, I admit that, but it's only ever in self-defense!"

"…Sure," said Chase, staring at him with something like wonder tinged with a sick, twisted amusement. "Keep telling yourself that, sport." He put his hands in his pockets and started to turn to go.

"Don't you walk away from me!" shouted Harry, stepping forward.

"Oh, but didn't you want to know what happened to your godson?" said Chase, facing Harry again and holding up a small vial he had taken out of his pocket. "Found it, by the way."

"…Give it to me," Harry said softly.

"Let me walk away," said Chase, throwing it up in the air and catching it again, ignoring Harry's noises of protest. "The stuff we just found out made me really regret what I've done, you know? Well, mostly. I don't regret that I'm still alive, for instance. It means I can track down that Hazle bitch and put an end to all of this. It'll be helping you out too, won't it? Since, if Teddy's still alive, he'll probably not be far from her."

"If you even _think_ about touching him—"

"Kid's already been hurt enough, I know, I get it," said Chase, holding up his arms placatingly. "So…here, I guess," he added, tossing the vial at Harry, who snatched it out of the air with the Seeker-like reflexes he was eternally grateful he still possessed. "Possibly see you around." He turned and left the building.

Harry stared after him. All of his Auror instincts were telling him to go after Chase, to immobilize him until he could figure out what to do with him, to put a bullet in his brain if he became too much trouble.

All of his godfatherly instincts were screaming at him to see what was in the vial marked _Edward R. Lupin_.

Harry unstoppered it quickly and poured the contents into the Pensieve, not even waiting for it to empty completely before plunging himself face-first into the bowl.

He found himself in the operation prep room with Healers Hazle and Palmer talking to himself and Teddy. The Metamorphmagus was wearing nothing but a small hospital gown. Just seeing his little boy again made tears of longing slide down Harry's face as he took in Teddy's rapidly browning green hair. Hazle seemed to be taking him through what was about to happen.

What kind of hell he was about to subject his godson to.

"Basically we'll be injecting him with a multitude of potions that will hopefully combat the lycanthropy in his system," she was saying. "He was born with this rather than cursed, so we're far more optimistic. The chances of success have gone from sixty-seven percent with most lycanthropes to around seventy-four percent, an historic improvement on all counts."

"So you use a needle to inject, then?" the Harry of the past repeated, mostly for Teddy's benefit it seemed, as the little boy hunched closer to his godfather's legs. Present-day Harry wanted nothing more than to scoop up the child and take him out of this place, but he knew that was impossible.

This was only a memory. Only the events were real.

"Yes," said Hazle, looking down at Teddy. "And it will most likely be very painful indeed. I'm not going to lie to you, child."

Harry looked down to see Teddy looking more and more nervous. He knelt in front of him and grasped his shoulders.

"We can walk away right now if you want," he said gently. "If you don't want to go through with this, we can call the whole thing off right now. I'll call the airport and we can maybe go check out the amusement park while we wait for the next plane, if you want."

Teddy gaped at him, his eyes wide. He looked down at the floor, hands trembling. After a long minute of contemplation, he looked back up at Harry with a determined look on his face.

"I'll do it," he said, almost succeeding in keeping the tremor out of his voice.

Harry smiled at him.

"You're so brave," he said. "And possibly a little stupid, just like your parents." Teddy smiled shakily. "And your godfather too, come to think of it," he added.

Teddy giggled, scrunched up his face, and turned his hair bubblegum pink.

"Hey, you're really getting the hang of this!" said Harry, beaming. Present-day Harry could see the Healers exchanging glances around them but he knew it was so that Tonks would be with her son in spirit.

"I still can't do spikes, though," said Teddy in frustration, reaching up and tugging at one of the pink locks.

"The color's more than enough, I promise you," said Harry. He held Teddy's hand tightly as they walked into the operating room together, the real Harry gliding through the window beside them. Teddy was looking nervously at the operating table, eyes flickering between the straps on it. Harry had a hand on his shoulder, watching the five different Healers fiddling with different potion vials around them. Teddy was visibly shaking now, and Harry crouched down before him again. "Whenever you want to stop, just say so. I'll get you out."

"You promise?" asked Teddy and the real Harry nearly sobbed at how small and lost his voice sounded.

"I solemnly swear it," said Harry seriously, and Teddy managed a small smile.

"We're ready for you now," said Hazle, smiling comfortingly at both of them. She took Teddy by the hand and lifted him up onto the operating table, while Harry was guided back into the prep room by a man that the Harry of the present recognized as a dead body in a car in front of the motel. He looked back and watched Teddy being strapped down to the table, including his head so he couldn't turn it. His eyes moved about frantically and he was shaking violently.

"Uncle Harry?" he called out, and Harry's heart broke.

"I'm right here," he heard his past self call out. "I'm right here behind the glass, I can hear you just fine. I'm right here and I'm not going anywhere."

"Okay," said Teddy, his breath incredibly shallow. "Okay."

Harry moved forward until he was right next to the operating table, almost through it, and covered Teddy's hand with his own. Even though he couldn't actually touch him and even though he knew Teddy couldn't feel it, he needed to be with his godson.

Healer Palmer started to walk forward with the first potion-filled syringe.

"This might sting a little," he said as he examined Teddy's arm, looking for a vein. Teddy closed his eyes. The needle went in and he winced, shaking again as the purple liquid started to seep into him.

"Feels weird," he said.

"I imagine so," said Palmer, chuckling. Another Healer stepped forward, this time with a dark blue potion, and she injected it in roughly the same spot. After a third Healer added a third, lime green potion to the mix, Harry noticed Teddy biting his lip.

"I feel like I'm burning," he said, trying to free his hands from the straps.

"Are you okay?" Harry heard himself ask behind him.

"…No," said Teddy, tears of pain beginning to leak out of the corner of his eyes.

Hazle came toward him next, holding a syringe containing a blood-red potion. She took his arm and inserted the needle.

"I want to stop," Teddy whimpered. "Uncle Harry, I want to stop."

"Okay, that's enough," said Harry, knocking on the glass. "Get him out of there."

Hazle turned to look at him through the glass, looked back at her patient, and pressed the syringe so the potion flowed into him.

Teddy screamed.

"TEDDY!" Harry shouted, pulling out his wand, but the Healer beside him immediately disarmed him. "STOP!" he yelled, banging on the glass with his fists. "YOU PROMISED YOU'D STOP!"

Hazle stared at him through Teddy's screams.

"_You_ promised him that," she said simply, somehow audible over the child's cries. "We said no such thing."

Harry stared back, but a fresh wave of screams seemed to jolt him back to the present and he grabbed for the door; the Healer he was with Stunned him from behind.

"Modify his memory," said Hazle uncaringly. "We'll figure out the details later, for now just store him somewhere."

Harry, after watching himself get dragged away, turned all attention to his sobbing godson. The screams had subsided, and he was, thankfully, still able to speak.

"Uncle Harry?" he called out, and Harry's heart broke. "I want to stop, I said I wanted to st-stop…"

"Your Uncle Harry's had to step out for a little while," said Hazle, holding out her hand for another syringe, this one filled with some kind of black, viscous potion. "I'm sure he'll be back soon."

"Please…I want to stop…I don't like this, it hurts…Please…"

Harry couldn't help himself. He tried to stroke Teddy's cheek with the back of his hand.

"I'm right here," he said softly as his finger's went right through Teddy's face. "Uncle Harry's right here, I'm with you…"

Teddy couldn't hear him. He couldn't see him. He couldn't feel him.

He was still calling for him, but no one came.

The muscles and veins under his skin were undulating like mad. His hair had turned completely white and his spasms were only getting stronger. His pleas went unheard as Hazle took up what looked to be the final syringe, this one filled with a flesh-colored ooze.

"I am truly sorry," she said in a remorseful tone, "But Harry's left."

Teddy's shaking suddenly ceased.

"Wh…What?" he gasped out.

"He's gone," Hazle repeated. "And it didn't look like he's going to come back."

"No…No, he wouldn't…He wouldn't leave me…" Tears were flowing freely down both his and Harry's face now.

"Don't cry, child," said Hazle, prepping his arm for one last injection. "You may feel like you're alone now, but I assure you that we'll take excellent care of you. You will be adored by all who have been chosen and you will never be alone again."

"No…I don't believe you…" Teddy really began to struggle against the straps now, his eyes wider than Harry had ever seen them. "Harry promised he'd never leave me…He promised…" Teddy began coughing up blood and could speak no more.

"You want me to put him in the school with the others?" asked Palmer as he took out a handkerchief and mopped up the blood.

"I suppose," said Hazle wearily. "Oh, and make sure to make Potter's death look like an accident," she added.

"Will do," said Palmer, and Harry was suddenly thrown out of the memory and back into the public records building.


	17. Pray for the children

The grim let out a long howl right before its skull was split open by Harry's crowbar. Prying the weapon out and kicking the monstrous dog out of the way, he sprinted as fast as he could down the drawbridge and back into the first part of Silent Hill he had found himself in. The amount of gaping chasms he'd had to avoid along the way was staggering; he was surprised he was able to make it this far back at all. He checked the map for ones that he'd marked before and managed to avoid still more of them on his way to the only school this town seemed to have. Why they'd decided to put Teddy there was anyone's guess, though he supposed they thought that a small child like him would be familiar with a school environment. Pity they were wrong, though; Teddy had always desperately wanted to go to a normal school like this. Not many children had been born during the war so he was basically the only wizarding child his own age that anyone knew of, and though he could have mingled with Muggles he still didn't entirely have his morphing under control. For the most part he had been isolated and homeschooled; when he did get a chance to interact with other wizarding children, he was often ridiculed for being a Metamorphmagus, most likely because they were jealous of his powers.

_Imagine what would've happened if they knew he was a werewolf as well,_ Harry thought miserably, skidding to a halt on Matheson St. and narrowly avoiding falling into another seemingly bottomless pit. He checked the map for an alternate route, but the only way he hadn't tried yet was a small alleyway connecting Bloch St. with Bradbury St. His radio had not quieted once after he came back outside and now he could actually hear the wings of one of the flying monsters beating closer and closer. Pocketing the map once more, he made his way to the alleyway and ran down it, avoiding the dogs, bone monsters, and two-headers that all tried to grab at him as he went.

Thankfully, Bradbury St. didn't have any holes in it at all, it seemed, which was a relief because Harry had no idea how he would have made it to the school otherwise. He stared up at the large, square building with a sign that read "Midwich Elementary School" while he panted and clutched the stitch in his chest. The radio static was getting louder and he could see a small mob of five or six monsters behind him with possibly more still obscured by the fog, so he stepped forward and tried the front door. He didn't expect it to be unlocked and was amazed when it swung open easily.

He found himself in a lobby with gray walls and a brown hardwood floor with blue square tiles. It actually seemed quite nice if dark. He went through to the main part of the school and saw a reception desk out of the corner of his eye. Going around it, he found a map of the school along with a Health Drink, which he immediately pocketed. There was also a large, illustrated copy of _The Tale of the Three Brothers_ with the sign of the Deathly Hallows blatantly scratched into the cover. His scar tingled faintly and Harry scratched at it irritably. He picked it up and flipped through it; apart from the cover it seemed to be in fairly decent condition. The pictures in it were different to the ones Teddy had and there were some words here and there that were probably just different because it was an American edition. Figuring Teddy might like it, he shoved it into his mokeskin pouch with everything else.

He tried the door on the other side of the entrance next, and it led to an infirmary. He inwardly groaned as he'd had enough of hospitals to last him a lifetime, but he had to check every room: This was the place they had taken Teddy. He had to be here.

He had to…

Harry found another Health Drink on a desk and picked it up, glancing down at the bed that was just large enough to hold a child. There was what looked like a ruby lying on the covers, which Harry found strange but made no move to touch it. He went back into the hallway and tried to open a set of doors that, judging by the map, would lead to a couple of classrooms, but the door was locked; the handle jiggled but didn't open. There was a door to a courtyard in the middle of the school and Harry tried it but found it to be jammed, completely unable to open. Only then did he start to worry that this place may indeed be like all the others.

The other set of hallway doors mercifully opened, and the radio immediately exploded with static. Harry shone the torch around the room and what he saw almost caused him to bolt back through the door again.

It was the small creature he'd seen locked up in one of the cages in the hospital. Now that he could see this one out and moving around, he saw that it was gray-skinned, sexless, and rather small, only coming up to his waist. When its single eye fell upon Harry, it opened its wide mouth and let out a long, high-pitched wail that drowned out the radio. As Harry went to cover his ears, it raised its hands to its eye and Harry was blinded by a flash of sudden white light. Blinking rapidly, he was suddenly unable to see barely anything in the dark hallway, but the small creature continued to wail and it wasn't long before Harry's crowbar made contact. The light went away but the screaming continued until Harry stomped on its head.

The radio static was still faintly emitting from Harry's pocket, however, and he had a feeling that there was another one in the hallway so he quickly attempted to duck into the bathroom; the boy's room was locked but the girl's wasn't. Unfortunately there was another small monster in there as well, and Harry hurriedly subdued it before it could turn around and blind him again. He found some shotgun shells perched on the rim of the sink and swiped them up before heading back into the hallway, going into the teacher's room before whatever else was in the hallway saw him first.

There were several desks, chairs, and computers scattered about the place in no particular order, and nothing had anything that looked very important on it. There was one shelf on the far wall in between a couple of windows that had four silver chalices on them, and Harry walked over to it for closer inspection. They reminded him strongly of the Hogwarts hourglasses to the point where one was filled with what looked like real yellow diamonds, one with sapphires, and the final with emeralds. The first chalice only had one single ruby in it, and was also somehow elevated far above the rest, as if the others had been pressed into the shelf, which was strange considering how thin the shelf actually was. There were exactly seven of the other gemstones within each chalice; when Harry went to count the emeralds, he accidentally knocked one out. As he bent down to pick it up, he noticed that the chalice had been raised slightly. He went to the one on the other end with the single ruby and tried manually pressing down on it, but to no avail; the chalice wouldn't budge. Placing the emerald back, he watched as it lowered itself again. He turned around and noticed for the first time the surprisingly ornate desk that the shelf had been placed above.

The desk looked like it was made of mahogany and was in far better shape than anything else in the school that Harry had seen thus far. There were many drawers in the sides of it and Harry felt compelled to try them all in his continued search for information. One had a box of shotgun shells, one had a Health Drink, and most of the rest were entirely empty. There was a thin drawer in the middle that would not open at all, and Harry felt for a keyhole; there wasn't one.

Looking behind him at the shelf again, Harry recalled seeing a ruby in the infirmary. Checking the room over one more time to make sure he hadn't missed anything, he went back out into the hallway, ignored the static, and made his short way back to the infirmary to get the ruby before immediately heading back to the teacher's room. He placed the ruby into the chalice with its partner and watched as the chalice lowered ever so slightly. Judging by the others, he needed to find five more for some purpose or other. And there were seven total to be had.

Harry sighed heavily. At least they would be confined to this one location this time. Hopefully.

He went back out into the hallway and tried to sneak up on the other monster that he knew was there, but to no avail; the monster flashed its strange light at him and once again Harry had to blindly take it out. Blinking at the spots suddenly dancing in front of his eyes as he stomped on the creature's head, silencing it and the radio, he tried the other teacher's room's door but it was jammed. Next he tried another door leading to another hallway on the first floor, but that one appeared to be locked. He checked the map. There was nowhere else to go but up.

He hesitantly climbed the stairs and was startled to see two other small creatures apparently waiting for him; they both blinded him at roughly the same time and started coming after him at once. Harry took out one but the other jumped on him and sank its pointed fingers into the sides of his legs. He beat it off with the crowbar and smashed both of their heads between his feet. Fighting back a pounding headache and aware of the static still emitting from the radio, Harry looked down at his legs. They weren't bleeding too badly and he didn't want to waste a Health Drink just yet. He took a deep breath and ran down the hallway and took out the other monster before it could attack him. Panting, he ran back to the stairs and checked the first classroom there.

Another monster was waiting inside, and blinded him again. This time Harry's crowbar accidentally hit one of the desks before finding its target; the monster had almost appeared to be able to use its surroundings to its advantage, but not quite. Harry fought back a shudder at the thought of them figuring out how to strategize.

He looked around the classroom. Between the two windows was a surprisingly beautiful painting of a horse that was being levitated by some unseen person. It kept flipping upside down and attempting to gallop in midair and there were tiny sparkles dancing around it. Harry was taken aback that this was a moving painting at first but then rationalized that of course it would be, what with this town apparently being well-integrated with Muggles and everything, assuming that Muggle children even went to this school at all. He was about to turn and leave when his torch lit up something inside one of the students' desks. He checked and saw that it was yet another box of shotgun shells, which made him incredibly concerned; he knew that America was far more relaxed about guns than the United Kingdom was, but this was getting outright ridiculous.

He went back into the hallway and checked inside the second classroom. This one didn't have any monsters in it, but there was an interesting bulletin board with multicolored drawings of hands that the children must have done; they appeared to be the sort where one places their hand down onto the sheet of paper and traces over them with a crayon of their choosing. He checked all of the desks but there was nothing useful in any of them, so he went back outside. Both bathroom doors were jammed and the door to the next hallway was locked, but he hadn't checked the one up by the stairs yet, and that one did indeed open.

The hallway was deserted and he didn't hear anything coming out of the radio, but he did hear what sounded like someone crying. He couldn't tell but it sounded like a little boy, and it was coming from the door right next to him. He crept toward it. The small sobs sounded eerily familiar…

"…Teddy?" asked Harry hesitantly, wishing rather than believing it to be true.

"…Alfie," said the voice tremulously, and Harry's heart sank. Then he remembered that one of the vials in the public records office had been labeled 'Alfred' and continued to hold onto hope that others like him were still being held here.

"I'm sorry," said Harry. "I'm looking for my godson, do you know anyone named Teddy?"

"…I don't think so," said Alfie.

"Well that's all right then," said Harry. "Here, do you need any help?"

"…Mom and Dad aren't here," said Alfie's voice softly.

"Would you like me to help you find them?" asked Harry, unable to prevent himself from helping this small, lost child.

"NO!" Alfie shouted, and Harry flinched. "I don't want anything to do with them!"

"…Why not?" Harry prompted softly.

"They just…" Alfie's voice sobbed. "They just _gave_ me to them…They said they would help me…Said they would make the pain go away but they _didn't_, it just hurt so much worse…I wanted them to stop but they wouldn't…And Mom and Dad wouldn't ever visit, they wouldn't let me see my little brother again, they didn't wanna _see me…"_

"…Well _I_ want to see you," said Harry encouragingly. "Please, would you open the door so I can help you?"

"You don't wanna help," Alfie's voice spat. "Everyone always says they wanna help, but you're gonna hurt me too, just like all the others. All grown-ups are always liars."

"…Grown-ups lied to me too," Harry said at length. "They said they would help my little boy. Instead they took him from me. Now all I'm trying to do is get him back. And I want to help both of you," he went on, his voice taking a placating tone. "Please, I mean you no harm."

"Liar," Alfie insisted. "One of the Healers said he had a niece with the same problem, and he hurt her anyway. I was in the room next to her, I heard things."

"…What kind of things?" Harry asked softly.

"Screams. Her begging him to stop. Him telling her to shut up."

"Merlin," Harry breathed. He looked down at the doorknob. "…Can I come in?"

"Door's locked," replied Alfie.

"…If I find the key can I come in?"

"I don't care," said Alfie, sniffling.

"Thank you," said Harry, reluctantly moving away from the door. He checked the map and saw that Alfie was in a room marked "Lab Equipment," which immediately made Harry start to worry. The room beside it was the Chemistry Lab which didn't appear to have another door connected to anything but Harry wanted to try anyway.

The lab was thankfully devoid of monsters and, true to the map, didn't have any other doors leading anywhere. There was nothing useful to be found either, not a key or any other items Harry could've used. There was something written on the chalkboard, however, and Harry took a closer look at it.

It appeared to be two different math problems. The first one listed the numbers 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, and a blank space. The second one was made up of three triangles, two of them with numbers at each point and the center, the third with numbers at each point but a question mark in the center. Harry rubbed his pounding head and groaned. He was decent at math back when he'd been in primary school but he hadn't had to do anything beyond the most basic addition in years. He wished he had Hermione with him, or someone else who had taken Arithmancy at some point; he was fairly certain he wouldn't be able to figure this out even if he didn't have a headache.

He squinted at the first one. If he remembered anything at all, it was that the first list of numbers were all prime numbers, meaning that the next in the sequence would be…nineteen, maybe? He would go with that. The second one looked instantly harder; the first triangle had a six at the top and a two and a three at the bottom with the number thirty in the middle, the second had a five at the top with four and one below and twenty-five in the middle, and the final one had four at the top, six and two at the bottom, and nothing in the middle.

Harry rubbed his forehead in aggravation. If his head would just stop _pounding,_ maybe he would be able to concentrate…

Wait…

Harry looked at the second triangle. Five times five was twenty-five…four plus one was five…For the first one, two plus three was five, times six was…Was it thirty? He was fairly certain it was thirty. So the last one…six and two was eight, so if Harry multiplied it by four…He rubbed his head harder, he was never good with the eights…thirty-two? Maybe? He counted it out on his hands. Yes, it had to be. He hoped that this would come in handy later, which stood to reason as everything else had, but otherwise he had just wasted roughly five minutes for no reason.

Back in the hallway again, the library reserve was jammed, and through the next door the actual library was locked as well. He managed to take one of two monsters by surprise and got the second one before he was blinded for too long, though his head hurt worse than ever. While he was grateful that it was a normal headache rather than his scar hurting, he still could have done without it. He tried the doors to both classrooms and every single one of them was blocked off. There was another set of stairs, however. Looking at the map, Harry realized that if he went downstairs he just might be able to gain access to the rest of the first floor, so down he went.

There were three monsters waiting for him and while he was fending them off another one managed to do increased damage to his legs while the others blinded him. Once they were all dead, he dug into his mokeskin pouch for a Health Drink and gulped it down as fast as he could. Surprisingly, not only did the wounds on his legs instantly heal, but his headache disappeared as well. He wondered if the headache was caused by the bright lights the newest type of monsters emitted or if the light actually hurt him in some way.

He tried the hallway door and it was able to be opened from his side, thankfully. He tried the doors to both classrooms; one had a wooden bust with a fancy hat carved into it with a box of handgun ammunition beside it, and the other was jammed. The door to some kind of hall was jammed as well but the other hallway door, like the first one, was able to be opened from the other side. The other entrance to the hall refused to open as well, but the door to the back entrance could open and after Harry killed the monster inside he picked up another box of handgun bullets as well as some more shotgun shells. In some trepidation, he tried to exit the school but the door refused to open.

In the storage room beside it, Harry saw a copy of _The Fountain of Fair Fortune_ resting on one of the shelves. He picked it up and flipped through it to near the end, feeling relieved in a way he couldn't describe that it was the original version instead of the twisted rewrite he had encountered in the amusement park. He put it with _The Tale of the Three Brothers._ There was nothing else to look at in the room and the door to the courtyard was also jammed, so he went back upstairs. He continued up until he reached the top, finding the door to the roof to be locked. He reflected that it may not be too handicapped-friendly but he was profoundly grateful that he wouldn't have to deal with a lift this time. He didn't think he ever wanted to take another lift in his life, which would make things interesting in the Ministry but he would find a way to get around.

Back on the second floor, he went around to the only hallway door he hadn't tried yet over at the other set of stairs, and thankfully it opened for him. There were a couple more monsters in there but Harry managed to take them out while only a slight increase in head pain and ear ringing. He looked around at the lockers and, seeing as he was near it, tried banging open the locker labeled 19. Shockingly, it sprang open and there was a ruby inside at the bottom. Harry hurriedly grabbed it and shoved it into his pocket even as he swung his head around, looking for number 32. It was one of the smaller ones and when he opened it he found a key marked "Lab Equipment Room." Grinning madly, Harry snatched it up and ran back out. He looked down at the map and saw that he only had one more room to check on the entire floor, and as it was right next to him he figured he might as well look into the music room before checking up on Alfie. He was still looking for his own little boy, after all.

The music room had nothing in it but a piano, which did nothing to interest Harry, and a copy of _The Wizard and the Hopping Pot_ which Harry grabbed and put with the others. Seeing nothing else of use, he ran back to where Alfie was locked up. He slid the key in, hearing it unlock as he slowly turned the handle and eased the door open.

The small storeroom had several shelves filled with bottles of chemicals, most of them with childproof seals on them, which was a relief. In fact, other than that, it was similar to the other storeroom he had found, only it had a small figure huddled in the corner.

A small, silvery, transparent figure.

"Oh, Alfie," Harry breathed, his insides squirming with guilt; his first reaction was utter relief that it wasn't his Teddy, though that was a horrible thing to think. His second reaction was unbridled fear that his boy had met the same fate. "It's okay," he whispered, slowly walking over to the ghost until he was standing right next to him. He didn't know whether or not Alfie knew he was dead, and he didn't want to be the one to break the news to him if he didn't, but…

"No one can hurt you anymore, I promise," said Harry truthfully, kneeling down and reaching out a hand until it was about level with the boy's shoulder.

"LIAR!" shouted Alfie, swiping at him, and Harry watched the boy's arm go through his own. "GO AWAY!" Alfie screamed, flying through him and through the wall of the classroom behind him; his scream was so loud that Harry instinctively covered his ears, shivering at the sensation of a ghost passing through him. His scar suddenly exploded with pain and he thought he heard the echo of a wolf's howl somewhere in the distance. As the pain receded and he was able to open his eyes again, he yelped at the sudden abrupt change in his surroundings once more.

The walls were once again flesh colored, but now it looked like every surface was actively writing, and now it appeared to be tied back with a mass of what looked like thick, black wire. The ceiling was like this as well, though thankfully the floor was spared in favor of metal grating once more. There were some areas in the wall where there were giant gouges, but not made by any knife or hammer or anything; it was more like something had scooped out a section of the wall, or that parts of it had somehow sunken in. There was only one broken shelf now where before there had been many, and all it had on it was another ruby.

Grabbing the gemstone almost without thinking, Harry got up and fumbled for the still normal-looking door within the wall and ran out into the hallway and back downstairs, frantically looking for the way out. The monsters had come back to life and while their wailing rang through his ears he had thrown up an arm to shield his eyes and darted past all three of them. He couldn't get through the doors at the end of the hallway so he tried to get into the girl's room just for a quiet moment of rest, but found the door jammed. This surprised him; the girl's room had been able to open the last time he'd come here but now it refused? In desperation, he tried the door to the men's room, which opened for him easily.

Closing the door behind him, he took out the map while trying to get his breath back. He took out the map and looked at it. As he had been going, he'd been marking which areas could be entered and which couldn't; now, he was decidedly in a place that had been closed off before. Had the transition between the normal world and…whatever dimension this other world was caused all of the locks to change as well? He didn't remember that happening in the hospital, and it had been so long since the motel…The amusement park had had something similar happen, though, since he had been able to go into the Tunnel of Love when it had all gone to hell and not when the world had been…normal? He didn't know anymore.

Before going back outside, he saw another box of handgun bullets sitting on the sink and snatched it up. He did away with the smaller monsters as quickly as he could — one jumped him again and it seemed that it was getting harder to get the spots out of his eyes — and went through into the teacher's room again. That, at least, was still able to be opened, although the layout had changed dramatically. The walls, ceiling, and floor were the same as in the rest of the school and most of the furniture had been thrown about or destroyed. The only two things that remained the same were the mahogany desk and the shelf with the silver chalices. Fumbling for the rubies, Harry placed them with the others and watched the chalice slowly sink a little further. Now he only had three more to go. He glanced at the desk behind him, wondering what was so special about it, when he saw a red pen lying on top of it, presumably for correcting students' homework. It was different than the black pen he'd been using, so he picked it up, figuring he could mark down this alternate route and not get too turned about.

The other teacher's room was now able to be opened but there were only four small monsters inside; Harry took them all out methodically, drinking another Health Drink in order to get rid of the now constant headache he seemed to be suffering on account of all the flashing lights. The room didn't even have anything in the corners and Harry cursed himself for wasting time and healing items.

He didn't want to go back through to the area where this had started for fear that the environment would only get worse if he did, though how he really couldn't fathom, so he went back up the stairs and had to deal with two more monsters once again. Frustrated, he went back to the staircase and tried the door to the roof again. This time the handle jiggled even if the door didn't open, meaning it was only locked instead of jammed. He went back down and tried one of the classrooms on the second floor. There were no monsters but what used to be the painting of a flying horse was vastly different now: Harry could just barely make out a figure curled up in the corner of a room, their flesh almost indistinguishable from the wall beyond them, and all around them were a mass of what may or may not be faces staring down at it. Shuddering, Harry backed out of the room and into the classroom next to it.

This one only had one monster, which Harry was able to sneak up on and take out with ease. He looked at where he knew the bulletin board was and staggered back until he nearly fell over a broken, rusted desk. The bulletin board was missing, and the patch of wall beyond it was somehow exempt from the rest of the writing mass of wall; instead it was gray and tarnished, and utterly coated in bloody handprints all over the bottom half of it. They didn't reach much higher than a young child would have been able to…There were even several scratch marks here or there as if the children really had been desperately trying to climb it somehow…

Harry ran out the door and tried not to be sick.

The bathrooms were both jammed, as was the music room when Harry checked the next hallway. There were a couple of monsters and Harry took them out. His arms were really starting to hurt from swinging the crowbar so often for so long, but at least it wasn't as bad as the sledgehammer. The locker room was an utter mess; most of the lockers themselves were wide open, with either dried blood or what looked disturbingly like body parts. As Harry was still searching for the rubies he was forced to look through them all, and he didn't find anything but an ampoule in locker 51. His head was pounding fiercely again; he took another Health Drink to clear it.

In the next hallway, three more monsters awaited him. In his frustration, Harry pulled out his handgun and nearly emptied it on all three of them. At least they stopped screaming and he wasn't blinded this time. The first classroom he checked didn't have anything but yet another box of shotgun shells, and there was nothing but two monsters in the next one. He managed to take one of them out but while he was in the process of reloading the second one not only managed to blind him but also to dig its claws into his leg. All the while it refused to stop screaming. Harry managed to finish reloading and shoot in its general direction, which must have worked because the screams finally ceased, and the radio didn't indicate that any others were in the area. There wasn't anything else and Harry went back into the hallway, knocking back another Health Drink as he left as the wounds in his legs were pretty deep.

The library was locked, but Harry could see a slot in the door that wasn't there before, he didn't think, presumably for book returns. The only books he had were the various Tales but all of those were too big to fit into the slot. The door to the hallway was locked, so he circled all the way back around and reluctantly opened the door to the lab equipment room. Nothing had changed, thankfully. The chemistry lab didn't have any monsters in it, but it did have a bunch of shrunken heads nailed vertically to the back wall for some reason. Harry waited for them to do something horrifying such as talk when he didn't expect them to, but mercifully none of them did. Their empty eye sockets unnerved him, though, and he backed out quickly to check the door to the library reserve, but before he could something caught his eye. He looked into the alcove on the other side of the hallway and, under an overturned bloody bench and nearly falling through the metal grating, was another ruby. He gingerly lifted it up so that he wouldn't lose it and placed it in his mokeskin pouch to make sure, reflecting that he needed to do a better job of checking all of the corners if he wanted to find the last two rubies even as he thanked his Seeker skills. The library reserve door wouldn't open so he unlocked the other hallway door by just opening it. There was nothing else left to look at on the second floor so he went back downstairs via the second staircase that would lead him to the rest of the floor that had been previously blocked off.

The hallway door in front of him still wouldn't open, but the classroom doors would, and he went through after he finished killing the monster he'd found in the hallway. The first classroom didn't have any monsters, but it did have the wooden bust on the desk. It was different somehow, and it was a couple of seconds before Harry realized that it was missing its hat. Stepping forward for a closer look, he jerked back in disgust as the smell hit him; the bust somehow had a real human brain shoved inside of it. Harry wanted to turn away but the light from his torch made something shine within the brain. He reluctantly crept closer and saw that there was a ruby embedded in the brain. Swallowing the bile that threatened to climb up, he reached out a hand and plucked the ruby from the brain as fast as he possibly could, wiping it off on his jacket before putting it with the other. Now he only had one more to go.

The second classroom was also bereft of monsters, but what it lacked in enemies it made up for in bizarre imagery. There were drawings of eyeballs everywhere: On the floor, hanging from the ceiling, plastered or intertwined with the black wire that helped make up the walls. One in particular caught his eye: A scarlet red eye with a cat-like slit for a pupil.

Underneath it said, in a child's handwriting, "Theyr always waching you."

That settled it. This country was a truly terrible place and as soon as Harry found Teddy they were never coming back to America again.

The other hallway door won't open but the door to the hall would. It was really just a large, empty space apart from three or so monsters; after checking around to see if there was anything useful Harry just ran around them and went through the other door into the next hallway. He opened both of the other hallway doors just to make getting around easier, and found the door to the storage room completely jammed this time. The courtyard door opened, however, and Harry found himself staring at a massive, ten-foot-tall hedge maze.

Flashes of the Third Task of the Triwizard Tournament went through his mind and he quickly checked to see if he could go around it. It was a tight fit but thankfully he could, and he went up to the door of what appeared to be a clock tower. It was jammed, so he ran to the other door and went back into the school proper.

After opening both hallway doors, doing away with two more monsters, and accumulating a bit of a headache again as he went, Harry checked the last three doors on the first floor. The infirmary and the lobby were both blocked off, but the office behind the reception desk was able to be opened. On the desk, the only thing that was still intact in the room, was a copy of _The Warlock's Hairy Heart_, strangely side by side with a copy of _Hairy Snout, Human Heart_. Harry gazed at the latter, remembering how he forced himself to finish reading it even though it was incredibly difficult to do so, but since Remus, Connor, Graham, Eliza, Huang, Agnus, and he supposed Teddy had to live through it, he felt the least he could do was just read about it. He remembered that there were some talks going on about making it required reading at Hogwarts to promote empathy, largely lead by Neville, though he admitted that it should only be for NEWT students considering the subject matter. Parents might complain otherwise, he reasoned; as if they wouldn't to begin with, said everyone else. Harry had read _The Warlock's Hairy Heart_ after the anonymous autobiography and failed to be as disturbed as everyone had expected him to be since he felt it barely even compared at all.

He pocketed the Tale but not the autobiography, and he wasn't really sure why, but his head was pounding too hard for him to really think about it.

Before going back out into the hallway, he pulled out the map again. He only needed one more ruby, he knew, and there were really only two places he hadn't looked yet: The hedge maze in the courtyard, and the basement. As he was still dead-set against going into the maze he headed back into the hallway and down the stairs into the one location he had not gone to yet in the entire school.

There was only one monster he had to deal with down there, and the door to the boiler room appeared to be jammed. The door to the storage room opened, however, and Harry had to cover his nose at the sudden horrible smell that blasted from the room. Eyes watering, he looked down and saw a dead hound lying on the floor, blood seeping through the metal grating and flies buzzing everywhere. It looked different from the grim-like dogs he'd been encountering; for one, it actually looked like it had been a normal dog at one point, and for another, it lacked the chains the others did. It looked as though it had been cut down with some kind of blade or axe. He was about to turn and leave when, once again, he caught a glimpse of something shiny. He angled the torch down and saw the seventh and final ruby lying amongst the dog's intestines. Disgusted, he pulled out the crowbar and used that to nudge the ruby closer to him, abandoning that idea when it looked as if the gemstone was about to fall through the grating and grabbed it up with his hand instead. At last, he had all of them.

Fleeing from the dead dog, Harry sprinted up the stairs and down the hallway, nearly tripping over the dead bodies of a couple of the small creatures that had fallen next to each other as he did so. Skidding to a halt in front of the teacher's room, he opened the door, jogged to the shelf, and placed the final three rubies into the silver chalice.

There was a click behind him and he turned to see the final drawer slide open. Along with several empty chewing gum wrappers, there was a small, thin, old book with a peeling scarlet cover inside. He picked it up and flipped through to the first page, curious despite himself.

_In the beginning, people had nothing. Their bodies ached, and their hearts held nothing but hatred. They fought endlessly, but death never came. They despaired, stuck in the eternal quagmire._

_A man offered a serpent to the sun, and prayed for salvation. A woman offered a reed to the sun, and asked for joy. Feeling pity for the sadness that overrun the earth, God was born from those two people._

_God made time and divided it into day and night. God outlined the road to salvation and gave people joy. And God took endless time away from the people. God created beings to lead people in obedience to Her: The red god, Xuchilbara; the yellow god, Lobsel Vith; many gods and angels._

_Finally, God set out to create paradise, where people would be happy just by being there. But then, God's strength ran out and She collapsed. All the world's people grieved this unfortunate event, yet God breathed Her last. She returned to the dust, promising to come again._

_So God hasn't been lost. We must offer our prayers and not forget our faith. We wait in hope for the day when the path to paradise will be opened._

Unable to read any farther, Harry went to close the book. The first few pages flew downwards and just before he could close the cover he caught slip of the list of due dates posted to the inside. If he read this right, it should have been returned at least two months ago, if not years; he honestly couldn't tell. Figuring that it was just the right size to be able to slip into the slot in the library, and not knowing what else to do, Harry ran back out into the hallway, up the stairs, and around to the door to the library itself. He put the book into the slot and nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard a click. Trying the door handle, it opened for him easily.

Apart from the walls, it looked like a normal library: There were shelves full of books and a couple of fairly clean tables. On a bookshelf next to another way into the library reserve, there was only one book on the top while the rest of it was empty. It was a copy of _Babbity Rabbity and Her Cackling Stump_, of all things. The shelf below that had another small red sign of the Deathly Hallows, and Harry didn't even bother rubbing his scar this time; he almost couldn't tell it even tingled through the pain of his current headache. He took another Health Drink and it was suddenly far easier to think.

The book was oddly placed, and when Harry went to take it he found that it wouldn't budge. Puzzled, Harry took out the other Tales he had found. When he placed the copy of _The Tale of the Three Brothers_ over the sign of the Deathly Hallows, he couldn't remove it no matter how hard he tried. Therefore, he reasoned that the others had to be placed on this shelf as well. He put them in the order that he remembered them being in Hermione's book and they all refused to be moved after that. Praying that he had made the right decision, he waited for something to happen. When nothing did, he shrugged and went to try the other door into the library reserve.

The door wouldn't open but it seemed to be locked rather than jammed. There was another thing that was quite odd about it: There was a small window in the door that he could just barely peek through. There appeared to be nothing but more bookshelves on the other side but he decided to try his luck anyway.

"Hello?" he called out. "Is anybody there?"

His hopes weren't very high, so he was startled beyond all belief when a small figure peeked out from behind one of the bookshelves. A small, white haired little boy with a heart-shaped face.

"Uncle Harry?" Teddy Lupin whispered in a soft, hoarse voice.


	18. I'm here and waiting for you

"Teddy," Harry breathed, hardly daring to believe it. He pressed his hand against the glass as Teddy crept closer.

"U…Uncle Harry?" Teddy repeated, stopping right in front of the door. He was thinner than Harry remembered, far thinner…His arms were crossed over his chest as if he were cold, and as they were left bare by his gray T-shirt they showed off the scars from his numerous transformations that Harry was just beginning to remember; he hadn't been able to take Wolfsbane for the first few years of his life so he ended up tearing himself up quite a bit. Now, however, there were also numerous places where his skin seemed to be outright _missing_, showing the muscles and even bone underneath…It even extended up to his neck and part of his face, which was otherwise whole if pale with tear tracks almost permanently etched into his cheeks. "Is…Is it r-really you?" he stammered out.

"Yeah…Yeah, it's me," said Harry, crying a little himself. "Oh, I've looked for you for so long, little one…"

His godson was shaking violently.

"…P-Prove it," he demanded tremulously.

"…Remember last year, when I was helping you clear out your old toys?" Harry asked softly. "I got angry with you over you not cleaning something or not taking proper care of it, I think it was your old stuffed wolf…And you just glared at me and…and said that I was right, that you should never have been born or…or that you should have died with your parents so I wouldn't have to put up with you…"

Teddy's shakes were beginning to subside, and he looked at Harry with something akin to wonder.

"And I immediately dropped whatever I was holding and picked you up in my arms, and just would not let you go, no matter how you struggled…I told you that I felt the same way sometimes, that I should've died with my own parents, but if I had then I would never have met you…That I loved you and loved putting up with you and that nothing would ever change that, especially not something as stupid as you not cleaning something…" Harry looked at Teddy pleadingly. "Do you remember that?"

"…Yeah," said Teddy, a small, beautiful smile on is face. He scrunched his face up and suddenly his hair was the same emerald green as Harry's and all of his scars had vanished. He ran up to the door and reached up to touch the window, his small hand encompassed by Harry's even though they were unable to actually touch. "…I can't see you anymore," he said, giggling a little.

"I can't see you either," said Harry, chuckling. "Back up a little for me?"

Teddy did so until he was able to smile up at his godfather. His smile faded quickly, though, and an expression of fear replaced it.

"They…the people who h-hurt me…They told me you…" He sniffed. "That you l-left me."

"Not by choice," Harry said immediately, desperate to reassure the child. "They put a Memory Charm on me to make me forget I'd brought you here, but I knew you were somewhere here anyway and I've been looking for you everywhere."

"…They should've m-made you forget me completely," said Teddy.

"I know, I can't believe how stupid they are," said Harry, beaming as he watched his little boy laugh. He never thought he'd hear that again…

"C-Can you get me out of here?" Teddy asked hopefully.

"…The door's jammed, little one," said Harry as gently as he could. "Can it open on your end?"

Teddy shook his head.

"I've been trying, but…"

"It's okay, we'll figure something out," Harry promised him.

"Can't you unlock it?" asked Teddy. "Your wand—"

"My wand was broken the minute I realized you were gone," said Harry regretfully. "I haven't been able to use magic at all."

"Oh," said Teddy, lowering his head and staring at the floor.

"…Wait, I've got an idea!" said Harry, fumbling for his mokeskin pouch and pulling out the crowbar. "Stand back!" he told Teddy, watching him back up against the bookshelf behind him before attempting to force his way through the door.

The crowbar bent and broke in his hands.

"Uncle Harry?" Teddy called through the door. "Are you okay?"

"…That didn't work," said Harry, staring at the broken tool in his throbbing hands. "I…The other door's locked as well, I've tried it before…I don't know what to do…"

"Uncle Harry…P-Please…" Harry looked through the window and saw Teddy starting to cry again. "They…It hurts a-and I just want it to st-stop…" He hiccoughed. "Please don't leave me here, I—"

"I won't leave you," Harry assured him immediately. "And the people who hurt you _will_ pay for what they've done to you, I promise you that. Not only is it my duty as an Auror but _no one_ hurts my family and gets away with it."

"…Can you g-get me out of here?" Teddy repeated in a voice so low that Harry almost couldn't hear him.

"Let me see what I can do," Harry stalled, not knowing of any way he really could get in to help him. He searched through his mokeskin pouch as thoroughly as he could, shoving aside the various Health Drinks and shotgun shells until he came across some items he'd nearly forgotten about. Chase had given him an orange, how had he never taken advantage of that…there was also a slipper he'd taken from the pool in the motel, the gauntlet from the knight in the amusement park, and…

Harry nearly gagged. He couldn't even remember picking up Alberta's partially eaten heart…

He looked up at the bookcase. The Hopping Pot had finally been silenced with a slipper, Sir Luckless had worn rusty armor in his Tale, and _The Warlock's Hairy Heart _had been all about absorbing hearts…

"Teddy," Harry said slowly, "is there anything on the wall right next to the door?"

"…Not really," Teddy replied. "There's a big rectangle that kind of goes into the wall a bit, but—"

"The bookcase," Harry cut him off. "There's a bookcase here; it probably moves if I have all the right items." He pulled the slipper, the gauntlet, and the heart out of his pouch and placed them under _The Wizard and the Hopping Pot, The Fountain of Fair Fortune, _and_ The Warlock's Hairy Heart_, respectively. Just like the books above them, once they were placed they could not be moved. He looked under _Babbity Rabbity and her Cackling Stump._

"I'm missing one thing," said Harry. "All I need is one more thing before I can open this bookcase."

"What kind of thing?" asked Teddy.

"…Is there anything related to _Babbity Rabbity _in the room with you?" Harry asked, knowing full well that even if there was there was no way for him to get to it.

"…I don't think so," said Teddy. Harry looked through the window and his heart leapt up to his throat momentarily when he couldn't see his godson, but that feeling quickly faded once Teddy entered his field of vision once again. "I can't see anything. Why?"

"All that I've found seems to have something to do with the Tales of Beedle the Bard for some reason," Harry explained. "I've got all five Tales and an item that goes with each, I'm just missing—"

"Do you have a hairy heart for the Hairy Heart Tale?" asked Teddy.

"…Did you read it?" asked Harry, slightly accusatory no matter how he tried to keep the tone from his voice. Andromeda wouldn't've read something like that to him yet, not at this stage, and it _definitely_ hadn't been Mrs. Weasley; Hermione hated the thought of censorship, he knew, maybe it was her, or maybe George had read it to him for a laugh—

"No, but I know what it's called," Teddy explained, putting Harry's fears to rest. "So did you find one?"

"…I found _a_ heart," Harry admitted.

"Like, a human heart?" asked Teddy, sounding oddly repulsed and yet excited at the same time. Young children, always impressed by something disgusting.

"…Yes," Harry admitted, not wanting to lie, especially since once the bookcase moved there was every chance Teddy would see it anyway.

"Did you have to kill someone for it?"

"No," said Harry firmly. "She died before I could save her and her heart had already been removed."

"Oh, okay. So how do we get the last thing?"

"…There might be something else I can do," said Harry at length. "There's one place in the school I still haven't checked yet—"

"You can't leave!" cried Teddy immediately, throwing himself at the door and out of Harry's sight but still throwing up a hand against the glass to let him know he was still there. "You can't leave me alone again, you promised you wouldn't leave, I can't do this without you, you can't go—"

"I _will_ come back," Harry promised him. "I will always come for you and I will _always_ find you. As long as I'm alive, you will never be alone, I _solemnly swear it._"

"B…B-But what if you d-die? L-Like M-Mummy and D-Daddy?"

Harry's heart broke as he pressed his hand against the glass, covering Teddy's hand once more.

"I…am so, _so_ sorry they aren't here," he said tearfully, wiping his eyes behind his glasses and a little grateful that Teddy couldn't see him right now. "I…I can't promise that I won't die," he went on, forcing himself to continue over Teddy's sobs, "but I _can_ promise that I'll try. I'll try to get you out and I'll try to make sure that even if something happens to me, you will never be alone. I think the both of us know enough Weasleys that that shouldn't be a problem," he added, and Teddy let out a watery, almost hysterical laugh from the other side of the door.

"…Hurry back," came Teddy's voice at length through his sobs.

"I will," Harry promised. He was doing quite a bit of promising; hopefully he would live up to all of them. "…Can I see you again before I go?"

There was a pause before Teddy stepped backward into Harry's view again, his scars reappearing one by one down his arms and neck, his hair slowly fading from green to white again. Harry was forcibly reminded of Remus's hair going steadily grayer the longer he'd known him and swallowed a sob of his own before he completely broke down in front of his godson. This little child would never forgive him for what he'd done…What he'd failed to do…

"I…I have a story to tell you," he began hesitantly. "It's…about your daddy."

Teddy looked up at him curiously.

"Would…" Harry went on, swallowing again. "Would you like to hear it?"

"…Can you get me out of here first?" Teddy said at length. "It's scary in here and…and they m-might come back."

"Of course," said Harry immediately, not a little relieved that he was able to put this off at least for the moment. "But…Would you mind morphing for me? Just a little?"

Teddy sighed, then scrunched up his face. Nothing happened. His expression looked genuinely pained, but it was still nearly a whole minute before his hair became bubblegum pink. Harry smiled at him.

"That's my boy," he said kindly, and Teddy shakily returned his smile. "I'll be back soon, I solemnly swear it."

Teddy nodded, and Harry backed away, keeping Teddy in his sight as long as he could before being forced to turn away to exit the room.

Before going downstairs, Harry went through the hallway door and tried to get into the library reserve in any case, but to no avail. He hoped his rattling the door handle didn't startle the child inside, for all that he had attempted to do it quietly so as not to alarm him. Giving it up as a bad job, Harry ran back downstairs, down the hallway, and through the door to the courtyard. He stared at the maze for some time, particularly at the bent and aged tree in the center that he hadn't noticed before, took a deep breath, and stepped inside.

He was immediately faced with the choice of taking the left or right path, and he chose the right one merely because he was right handed and it seemed as good a place to try as any. As he went along the curved path, he noticed that there were tiny flowers woven into the hedge that appeared to be yellow, though it was hard to tell in the dim light of his torch under a pitch black sky. Hitting a corner, he swung around and continued, stopping suddenly when he heard a noise. It sounded eerily like footsteps from somewhere beyond him. He was reminded forcibly of all the obstacles he had encountered in the other labyrinth he had been made to go through and hoped that he wouldn't encounter anything similar here. Just in case, he pulled out his hand gun and made sure the safety was off before continuing onward.

The path he had chosen seemed fairly straightforward, even as the sounds of footsteps increased the farther he went into the maze. Though he had to turn about several times, he never actually hit any dead ends or encountered any other forks as of yet.

He did cry out, however, when something jumped out of the maze and slashed him across the shoulder.

Turning, he saw a writhing mass of black and rotted roots dotted with the small yellow flowers jutting out of the hedge; it appeared to be dripping blood. It had coalesced into the shape of a human torso, arms, and head, the face of which appeared to be screaming. He emptied his clip into it and it went limp, and he dashed off before it could rise up again, reloading as he ran. Another one leapt out at him but he ducked under it in the interest of saving ammunition. The root creature didn't appear to want to follow him, but remained where it was, lashing out with its makeshift arms.

The footsteps had seemed to falter when he fired his gun, but resumed their rhythm rather quickly.

Harry dashed along the path as quickly as he could, seeing an opening to his left but pushing on ahead, rationalizing that he would be able to come back later if he needed to. Another root monster appeared at the corner directly ahead of him, effectively blocking his exit, and he fired another round into it so he could make his way past it. Reloading once again, he saw that he was starting to run low on ammunition. He might have to switch back to the sledgehammer soon if not the shotgun itself. Why were these things so hard to kill? And why did they keep coming for him?

Dodging three more of them, Harry nearly wept when he saw that he had come to a dead end. Backing up, one of the ones he had ducked under managed to get in another blow. Firing at it in frustration, Harry retraced his steps until he found that gap he'd run past earlier and ran down that route instead. He had to shoot another at a corner before pressing on, sliding under two more in a row before finally coming to the center of the maze.

The tree was gone; only a stump remained. What Harry had mistaken for loud footsteps were actually the blows of small hatchet, which had been left behind, embedded in the stump itself.

The axe from the cackling stump…This had to be it. Harry crept forward and yanked the hatchet from the stump, turning around and trying to remember his way back. He'd first encountered the opening in the hedge on his left, so if he turned right when he got there…

He looked at his gun. After this clip, he only had one more box of ammunition. He better use it wisely.

Retracing his steps and managing to find his way down the correct path, Harry did end up using the clip after all on a larger-than-average root monster that he couldn't get around. He'd tried to use the hatchet but it was too small and the root monster was too fast. It wouldn't stay down for long, either, so Harry fired five more shots into its head, skirting around it before it woke up again. With only five more bullets in his gun, Harry shoved it into his pouch before making a run for it, getting slashed a couple more times in the process before limping out of the maze at long last. It took three Health Drinks before he was feeling like his normal self again; he didn't have many more of those either. He did still have several ampoules, though, but he wanted to see if they worked on Teddy. He shoved one of them deep into his pouch for safe keeping, or at the very least as a last resort.

Hatchet in hand, Harry dashed back into the school and ran back to the library as quickly as he could, doubling over and clutching the stitch in his chest as he stopped outside the door with the small window.

"I…I'm back," he called through the door, trying to get his breath back. "And I…I think I've got it."

"Really?!" cried Teddy's voice, sounding ecstatic. Harry stood up straight, still breathing heavily, and saw Teddy jumping up and down in excitement, hair his favorite shade of turquoise once more.

"Yeah," said Harry, nearly as excited as he was. He held up the hatchet. "Hang on, little one, I'll get you out in just a second."

"Okay!" Teddy cheered, dashing out of sight; Harry knew he was going for the area behind the bookshelf. Harry went up to the shelf itself and placed the hatchet under the copy of _Babbity Rabbity and her Cackling Stump,_ and the bookcase began to slide to the left.

There was a click, like the sound of a door unlocking, and Teddy screamed.


	19. Please

Harry shoved his face into the crack between the bookshelf and the wall and saw Healer Hazle wrap her bony hand around Teddy's arm and drag him towards the now-open door of the library reserve.

"GET AWAY FROM MY GODSON!" Harry shouted, going for his wand but grabbing his gun instead. Before he could aim it, however, Hazle aimed her own wand at Harry and fired a Blasting Curse at him, and he was thrown back into a bookshelf behind him. Forcing himself up, Harry didn't even bother to go through the secret door he'd been so desperate to open, but instead ran out of the library and through the hallway door, watching Teddy disappear beyond the door at the other end, his hand reaching out and calling out to him. Harry darted down the hallway as quickly as he could, and judging by the sound of Teddy's screams he was being taken upstairs, to the roof. Harry took the stairs three at a time and burst through the door before it could be closed properly.

Healer Hazle was backing up on the roof, an arm around Teddy's chest and her wand pointed at his throat.

"Let him go," Harry spat through clenched teeth.

"Not possible," Hazle replied crisply. "He is perfect for our needs. The blood of a lycanthrope and the blood of a Metamorphmagus…We never dreamed the product of such a union would ever be possible! He will become the vessel for God, who will destroy this world and rebuild a perfect Paradise."

Teddy jerked his head up to stare at her, looking petrified.

"So _that's_ what this was all about?!" cried Harry. "Your crazy cult religion?!"

"It is the only true religion!" yelled Hazle in anger.

"That's what everyone says about their religion!" Harry retorted. He wanted to reach for his gun but knew he couldn't make any sudden movements; who knew what she would do to Teddy if he did. Though she _did_ basically say that she needed him alive…

"I had a feeling we should've done away with you," Hazle said menacingly. "I probably should've just killed you after what happened with Miss Owens, but I always believed you would make a magnificent sacrifice to pave the way to Paradise. And as soon as this boy has made his final transformation, well…Thy will be done."

"Let me go!" cried Teddy suddenly, struggling to get away, but Hazle merely dug her wand deeper into his neck even as she shook him violently.

"Idiot child!" she yelled. "Do you not know the great and terrible task that is before you?! Do you not realize all of the benefits that will be reaped for Mankind?!"

"I wanna go home!" Teddy wailed, still trying to fight her off.

"_Crucio,"_ Hazle said almost lazily, and Teddy collapsed to the ground, screaming.

"STOP IT!" Harry bellowed, going for his gun and firing, but Hazle had evidently put up a very strong Shield Charm before he'd come up to the roof and the bullet rebounded off of the air around her harmlessly. She looked right at him and smiled brightly as she lifted the curse.

"You want to be more careful," she admonished over Teddy's cries of pain. "One of those stray bullets just might hurt someone you care about. It's a problem we frequently face in the States, I'm afraid. We learn to produce incredibly strong Shield Charms very early on in our education here; it's a really useful thing to know, as I'm sure you've guessed."

"Teddy!" Harry called out, feeling more and more anxious as Teddy curled up into a ball, still sobbing. "Are you all right?" He saw his precious boy shake his head no. "Don't worry, love, I'm gonna get you away from her, just hold on."

"Oh, I wouldn't come closer if I were you," Hazle taunted, waving her wand around almost lazily. "I really don't want to have to hurt him anymore."

"That's all you've been doing," snarled Harry, utterly fed up.

"Well, the main reason we did so was to not only test his pain threshold — there _will_ be a certain amount of agony when God emerges, after all — but to fill his heart and soul with hatred. Unfortunately, we seemed to have failed in that regard, as he has really only shown fear for us. Understandable for a child, I suppose, but it is an unfortunate setback. Now, however…" She looked down at Teddy, who was peeking up at her, terrified, from between the arms he had thrown over his face.

"Would you like to know the full story about how your father died?" she asked sweetly.

Harry's heart stopped.

"Y-You…You'd j-just lie t-to me ag-gain," Teddy stammered, trying to crawl away from her. "All you w-want to do is h-hurt me."

"This is true," said Hazle uncaringly, not even bothering to stop him but not moving her wand away from him. "In fact, I'm rather like your godfather in that regard."

"Uncle Harry would never hurt me!" Teddy protested, struggling to sit up and almost managing it.

"Oh really? Is that why he's been lying to you? Keeping secrets about your father?" A horrific smile crossed over her face. "Doesn't it hurt you to know that he's doing that?"

"He…He w-wouldn't…" Teddy said determinedly, but Harry could see the doubt in his face, and it crushed him.

"He had a chance to kill your father's murderer, Dolohov, but he didn't take it," Hazle said almost gleefully. "Because he spared that man, your father was killed."

Teddy stared up at her, slowly turning his gaze to Harry. It looked as if he were pleading with his godfather to tell him that all of this was false. Harry couldn't bear to watch but neither could he look away.

"And yet he's killed plenty since then, hasn't he?" Hazle went on. "Tom Riddle…Robert Cole...the case with the Henley family…." She chuckled darkly. "He would kill in self-defense and to prevent anyone else from getting killed, as long as it only affected complete strangers, of course. When it comes to protecting someone he actually cared about…well, it's really as if he didn't care at all, isn't it?"

Teddy's eyes never left Harry's.

"Uncle…Harry?" he whispered, begged…

"…I'm sorry, little one…" Harry choked out. "I'm so sorry…"

Hazle smiled and stepped away, lowering her wand and backing up to one of the far corners of the roof.

"Beca…Because of you, D-Daddy's…" Teddy's pleading look changed to one of anger, then to one of hatred. His skin began to bubble…All of his scars reopened and began gushing blood…His hair turned black and began to grow all over his body…His bones audibly snapped as they took a new shape…His clothes ripped as he sprouted upwards, suddenly nine feet tall…His face elongated into a bastardization of what a wolf's face would look like, mutated and deformed, with its jet-black eyes rolling in their sockets…A tail suddenly sprouted out of nowhere, black as its fur but not bushy or tufted: Harry could see the bone beneath the patches of fur and skin that were falling off…In fact it was like that everywhere, patches of skin and fur were falling off in chunks and the wounds refused to stop bleeding; some of them even looked old and infected and the new ones were bubbling with pus…

…_This_ was Hazle's idea of God?

…Was…Was _this_ his…his baby godson…?

Harry had seen him transform before but…but _this_…

The monst…Te…the monster came rushing at him all of a sudden, and Harry was still rooted to the ground and unable to move as it — he — it slashed at his chest. The pain brought Harry back to the present and he quickly ran out of the way of the…of its oncoming path. He ran back for the door to exit the roof but it was suddenly locked, and Harry wasted precious seconds fruitlessly tugging at the door as the wolf-like…being took another swipe at him. Falling to the floor, Harry dragged himself up and dodged to the side, trying to find a way off the roof. He even momentarily considered just jumping off, but when he tried he found his way impeded by invisible walls. He looked toward the corner where Hazle had scuttled over to and she just smiled coldly at him.

A sudden downward slash from what had once been Teddy brought him back to his senses again and he immediately brought his mind back to the fight. Skirting around the…the _thing_…Harry pulled out a Health Drink and immediately downed it, feeling his wounds close but not completely fade; the pain was still there but he wanted it to still be there, to keep him focused. As he reached inside the bag again to throw the empty Health Drink container back inside, his hands closed around the shotgun. Without even thinking he pulled it out, cocked it, and pointed it at Teddy.

He couldn't do it. He couldn't pull the trigger. No matter what he looked like, he was still Teddy Lupin—

The creature slashed at him again, taking out a good chunk of his shoulder. Harry shouted in pain and accidentally fired at the wolf, who howled and fell back momentarily.

Teddy wouldn't want to be used like this. His little boy wouldn't want to kill anyone, least of all his godfather, the closest thing he had to a parent. If Harry had had the choice of killing Sirius in a mindless rage or being killed by him to prevent him from killing _everyone_, he would've wanted Sirius to kill him.

Teddy would want to be…He wouldn't want…

Remus and Tonks would forgive him.

They wouldn't.

They had to.

There was no way. _No one_ would ever forgive him for this.

Remus and Tonks would. They would forgive him because they would _understand._ They definitely would…

…right…?

Harry let loose a scream of pure agony as he fired at the wolf again and again until his shotgun was empty.

The wolf whimpered momentarily but got up nonetheless and came after Harry again. Harry fumbled for another box of shotgun shells but was still attacked once again by Teddy as he was reloading. He fired again and again, each shot hitting dead on easily, but Teddy kept coming. Another slash in the back as Harry attempted to reload quickly; he dropped a couple of shells that time but he had to get out of the way and wasn't able to pick them up. The remaining four rounds were fired right into Teddy's head; he slowed but would not go down. Harry tried to aim the next six shots into Teddy's mouth while he was howling at him, but this had as much effect as shooting him normally did.

Harry almost didn't even bother to reload the shotgun again. He almost refused to fight back. He almost let his godson kill him.

Only one thing held him back: The memory of Remus resigning from Hogwarts just because he _could have_ hurt one of them that night. He probably carried that guilt with him up until the moment he died.

Teddy was Remus's son. If he hurt or killed anyone while transformed, he would never be able to forgive himself.

Harry reloaded and fired until the gun was empty, and the wolf fell, twitching and shuddering, to the ground.

Harry walked toward Teddy until he was standing over him. He'd always stomped on his enemies before to make sure they were dead; he hadn't even noticed the radio static emitting from his pocket until now, but he suspected it had been playing for the duration of the fight. If he lifted his foot now…if he used just one more bullet…

His shotgun was empty. He had one more box of ammunition, but was too exhausted to reload it. He reached into his mokeskin pouch. The handgun still had a few bullets left.

He didn't want Teddy to die like this…looking like a monster.

Instead of the gun, his hand closed around one of the small ampoules. He yanked it out of the pouch, unstoppered it, and poured the contents down the werewolf's throat.

The creature gurgled and writhed on the ground, but it was slowly shrinking; the hair was receding, fading back to white, and the wounds caused by all of the bullets Harry had fired into it were closing…

It was turning back into a human…

Teddy shivered violently, curling up into a ball again. Harry tore off his jacket and wrapped it around the small, naked, trembling form. His godson turned his head and dark eyes met bright green ones.

"…Uncle…Harry?" he whispered hoarsely, barely audible.

"It's me, baby," Harry said softly, gathering the child in his arms. "It's me." He held the little boy against his chest. "I'm so sorry I hurt you…I know you'll never forgive me but…"

"I…I don't hate you," Teddy breathed. "I was just…angry, I guess…"

"I know," said Harry, stroking his white hair. "I'm angry at me too."

A weak giggle emitted from the child in his arms, and Harry managed a small smile down at the boy he loved.

"NO!"

Godfather and godson whipped their heads around in unison to stare at the irate witch who was pacing about the edge of the roof in a rage.

"Another failure!" she spat ferociously. "I can't believe this, I simply cannot believe this! No…" She ran her hands through her hair. "That's just it, I didn't believe…My faith still wasn't strong enough…" She looked over at the boy cradled in Harry's arms. "The child survived, though, that's a first, and even Alberta's infant wasn't too poor an attempt…I must be getting there, it…God needs to be sated, yes, we can't offer up a sacrifice that wants to go down fighting; the offering must be strong but meek, that's all…" Her gaze fell upon Harry himself; so fixated was she upon Harry and Teddy that she never saw the shadow clamber onto the roof and creep towards her. "The Savior of the Wizarding World…Always doing the impossible, felling gods and demons left and right…I thought you would make a good sacrifice for God, but perhaps…" An insane glow lit up her suddenly wide eyes. "Yes…_You_ will be the perfect vess—"

Her neck was suddenly twisted around and she fell to the floor of the roof at Chase's feet.

"Welp," he said conversationally, dusting off his hands and glancing around, "looks like that takes care of the worst of 'em. Think I got the rest, too…or if not, you certainly did," he added with a wink in Harry's direction. He blinked at the child cradled to Harry's chest. "Looks like you've been busy. I'll just let you keep going. Later!" He saluted and lowered himself off of the roof to whatever route he had used to climb up. Harry wanted to go after him but Teddy coughed and Chase was instantly forgotten.

"Are you all right?" he asked as Teddy wheezed.

"Y-Yeah," Teddy choked out. "I th-think so…"

"Good, that's good," Harry whispered gently. "…Want to get out of here?"

"Mm-hmm," Teddy murmured, looking shyly up at his godfather. Harry smiled, lifted Teddy up, and went to the roof's exit, which mercifully opened. He walked down to the first floor and was relieved to see that the school appeared to have returned to normal. He then made the mistake of looking down and nearly gagged at what he saw.

There were several bodies of dead children strewn about the floor.

What had Chase _done?_

Harry noticed Teddy look up at him questioningly and quickly maneuvered his face into his chest, not enough to suffocate him but just enough so that he wouldn't have to look.

"Uncle Harry?" Teddy prompted quietly.

"…Something horrible happened, Teddy," said Harry softly, never wanting to lie to this child again. "Please don't look."

"Okay," Teddy agreed readily; Harry figured he'd already had enough gruesome imagery for more than one lifetime. As he carefully stepped over the bodies and made his way toward the exit, Teddy commented that "It smells bad."

"Yeah," Harry agreed. "It does." Reaching the exit, he pushed the door open and the both of them inhaled the fresh air together. Harry stepped forward cautiously but the radio was silent and nothing came at them through the fog. Hoping that he was able to remember the route, Harry walked into the fog in what he hoped was the correct direction in order to exit the town.

"Daddy?" whispered the small figure in his arms.

Harry looked down at him.

"I'm—" _I'm not your daddy,_ he wanted to say for the umpteenth time since Teddy had first learned to speak, but the words were silenced before they left his throat as Teddy reached out a feeble hand and touched Harry's cheek.

"…Yes, little one?" he said instead, a tear flowing down his cheek that Teddy weakly brushed away.

"Where are we going, Daddy?"

"…Home," said Harry firmly. "We're going home."

"That's good," said Teddy tiredly, lowering his hand.

"…Granny will be so excited to see you," Harry rambled as he continued down the street. "And Grandma Weasley will put up such a fuss…she'll cook all your favorites, I'm sure of it…And Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron will want to hear all about this, I've no doubt about that…"

He looked down and saw Teddy smiling up at him, blinking lazily and yawning occasionally. The poor child seemed utterly exhausted; he would need lots of rest when they got home. Harry continued to talk about all the people who were waiting for them in the same comforting tone for some time, walking on and on until they finally reached the outskirts of the town. A screech sounded above them and Harry jumped, relaxing as he saw Ginny's screech owl Lothatug careening toward them through the dissipating fog; it looked like he had been circling overhead for some time. Harry adjusted Teddy in his arms so that Lothatug could land on his shoulder and he could remove the note attached to his leg. Reading the note, Harry's knees began to tremble as tears poured down his face anew.

"Guess what, little one?" he said to the boy in his arms. "You're going to be a big brother."

Teddy didn't answer.


	20. The fear returning

His shotgun was empty. He had one more box of ammunition, but was too exhausted to reload it. He reached into his mokeskin pouch. The handgun still had a few bullets left.

He pointed it at his godson and pulled the trigger.

* * *

><p>Teddy woke with a start, the sharp pain in his head making him cry out. He clutched his forehead and felt something wet; when he pulled his hand away, it was red and sticky. His chest hurt as well from the seatbelt, and he unbuckled himself, breathing heavily and trying to hold back the tears.<p>

He looked around. The glass from the windshield and one of the windows had been shattered, and the front of the car was scrunched up like a horrible mockery of an accordion against the tree they must have hit. Outside his window, he could see a deer galloping away in the eerie red light from the back of the car that must've still worked.

He turned to his left and saw his godfather slumped over the steering wheel, blood pouring from his face.

"Uncle Harry?" he spoke up, wiping blood out of his eyes. His forehead and chest really did hurt quite a bit; maybe Uncle Harry had some dittany with him or knew some healing spells. "Uncle Harry?" he tried again when his godfather didn't move. He reached out an arm and shook Uncle Harry's shoulder, but he remained still.

"…Daddy?" Teddy tried. That usually got a reaction; he knew Uncle Harry wasn't his real daddy, that a man called Remus had died during the war, but he had always viewed his Uncle Harry as his father.

He had no one else, after all.

"Daddy?" he tried again, louder this time. Uncle Harry still didn't move.

"…Please wake up," Teddy pleaded, sitting up in his seat and shaking Harry harder. "Please don't leave me alone…"

_Please don't leave me too…Not you…_

He shook his godfather so hard that he fell into the door on his side. Teddy took a good look at his face; his eyes were open and glassy.

"…Stop playing," said Teddy. "I know you're awake, now _move!"_ He shook Uncle Harry as hard as he could, but there was still no reaction. Teddy started to cry. "WAKE UP!" he screamed, pounding on Uncle Harry's shoulder.

Nothing.

A bright light flashed in the corner of his eye; Teddy turned and saw another car coming and scrambled for the door. It was stuck; he had to kick it open. He ran out to the side of the road, waving his arms and yelling for it to slow down, but it just swerved around him and drove on. The same thing happened to the next two cars that came careening down the road: No one helped him.

No one wanted to help him.

No one wanted him.

He was alone.

Teddy screamed.


	21. Just remember

_A/N: **THIS IS THE JOKE ENDING. IF YOU WANT TO REMAIN SPOOKIFIED STOP READING.**_

* * *

><p>Hatchet in hand, Harry dashed back into the school and ran back to the library as quickly as he could, doubling over and clutching the stitch in his chest as he stopped outside the door with the small window.<p>

"I…I'm back," he called through the door, trying to get his breath back. "And I…I think I've got it."

"Really?!" cried Teddy's voice, sounding ecstatic. Harry stood up straight, still breathing heavily, and saw Teddy jumping up and down in excitement, hair his favorite shade of turquoise once more.

"Yeah," said Harry, nearly as excited as he was. He held up the hatchet. "Hang on, little one, I'll get you out in just a second."

"Okay!" Teddy cheered, dashing out of sight; Harry knew he was going for the area behind the bookshelf. Harry looked over at the shelf, then back at the hatchet, then back at the door in front of him.

"Fuck it," he muttered, and took the hatchet to the door, hacking at it until he was able to kick it open.

"YAAAAAY!" Teddy cried out, glomping Harry as the Final Fantasy victory fanfare played in the background.

Without warning, the main door to the library reserve burst open, and Pyramid Head shambled in, dragging the great knife behind him.

"Oh I am having _none_ of this shit!" shouted Harry, spontaneously turning into a stag; he charged forward and impaled Pyramid Head on his antlers, swinging his head around until the manifestation of the guilt felt by James Sunderland **and no one else** flew out the window.

"PYRAMID HEAD'S BLASTING OFF AGAAAAaaaaiiinnn…" bellowed Pyramid Head, because he can talk now, until he was naught but a twinkle in the sky.

"…Well that was random and pointless," commented Teddy, now an adoragable little wolf puppy for no raisin.

Suddenly, a kind of high, repetitive beeping noise could be heard from somewhere above them. Harry and Teddy glanced up at the ceiling, then at each other, and Teddy dashed out of the room, down the hallway, and up the stairs to the roof, Harry galloping at a sedate pace behind him.

The door to the roof had been unlocked somehow and Teddy and Harry ran out, looking up at the sky as the beeping was still coming from overhead. The fog had cleared and a starry sky could be seen, from which a massive flying saucer began to descend. Landing on the roof in front of them, the door opened and a ramp descended, with four figures running down it.

"'Sup, nerds!" said a large, bear-like dog in Sirius's voice, tackling Harry to the ground. Harry laughed and struggled back to his hooves, seeing Teddy scamper around a large gray wolf that was chortling in Remus's voice. He looked beyond the wolf to see another stag accompanied by a doe, slowly walking towards him. The stag got there first.

"Hey, son," said James, butting antlers with Harry's.

"Dad," said Harry warmly. He turned to the doe and nodded. "Mum."

"Ten points from Gryffindor," said Snape's voice emitting from the doe.

"…Wut."

"So…" said Teddy, currently perched on his father's head after a brief silence of everyone staring at Snape, "are we dead or something?"

"Iunno," everyone shrugged.

"…WHO WANTS TO CONQUER THE KNOWN GALAXY!" shouted Sirius.

"I DO, I DO!" cheered everyone except Snape, who merely snarled at all of them, and they all went into the flying saucer and took off to go on wacky space adventures. All was well.


End file.
